Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, has allegedly been charged by Argentine attorneys in a criminal court for endorsing a cryptocurrency that surged and then fell over the weekend. Following Milei’s post on X, Libra (LIBRA), the native Solana token of the Libertad project, surged to a market capitalization of $4.56 billion on February 14. After he removed the post, it then dropped by more than 94%, leading to claims of a pump and dump scheme and sparking the Milei LIBRA fraud controversy.
According to an Associated Press article on February 17, lawyers Marcos Zelaya and Jonatan Baldiviezo, engineer Maria Eva Koutsovitis, and economist Claudio Lozano have filed a criminal case alleging Milei was engaged in fraud by marketing Libra.
Javier Denied Allegations
In a statement released Saturday, the Presidential Office denied any wrongdoing, stating that Javier had no involvement in the development of $LIBRA and that his post was taken down to avoid suspicion despite having been posted in good faith to stimulate entrepreneurial endeavors.
Javier himself responded on X, writing that he was not aware of the details of the project and that after getting informed, he decided not to continue promoting it, which was why he deleted the tweet. He also stated that it was the act of his political opponents who wanted to exploit the controversy to defame him.
Documents and internet records verify that Javier and his administration spoke with representatives of KIP Protocol, the group behind $LIBRA, prior to its introduction, even though he denied it. The Executive Branch’s Anti-Corruption Office has launched an internal investigation.
Hayden Davis React, Jupiter Exchange, And KIP Protocol
The CEO of KIP Protocol, Hayden Davis, openly blamed Javier Milei regarding the downfall of $LIBRA. In a video statement released on February 15, Hayden said that despite prior commitments, Javier and his team had unexpectedly changed their position by withdrawing their support and deleting all previous posts on social media.
Jupiter Exchange, one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, also acknowledged that some of its team members had already known about the launch of $LIBRA before Javier’s tweet. In a statement, Jupiter admitted that a few members of the Jupiter team had known that there would be, at some point, a token project associated with Argentine President Javier Milei. They mentioned that they had learned of this approximately two weeks prior directly from Kelsier Ventures.
$100 Million In LIBRA Funds Still Controlled By Hayden
Despite the huge price drop, the $100 million LIBRA treasury funds are still under the control of Hayden. He stated that he would reinvest and burn all purchased LIBRA tokens to make it transparent. Hayden said that unless a more viable alternative was presented, he intended to begin the process of executing the plan within the next 48 hours. He also denied allegations against him, placing the blame on Milei.
Javier Milei is now at the center of one of the largest cryptocurrency scandals in history, investors have lost millions of dollars, and the Argentine government is coming under increasing scrutiny as the court battle rages on. The Milei LIBRA fraud case continues to unfold.
