Lingering $LIBRA
The latest update on Milei's LIBRA token and on-chain evidence that doesn't lie.
Welcome Avatar! A recent ruling fuelled by the opposition in Argentina unblocked the investigative commission around the crypto token LIBRA, promoted by President Milei in February this year. Could there be any potential consequences for Milei’s presidency, or can this be contained to some of his advisors?
In August, the opposition bloc in the Chamber of Deputies got a small win in unblocking the formation of the commission investigating the LIBRA scandal, which had been bogged down by the inability to elect its officers. Since Q2 of this year Milei’s La Libertad Avanza and its allies have sought to prevent the formal start of the investigation, which has President Javier Milei and some close associates at the center of the investigation.
The final text will be presented to the floor next week. If approved, the commission will have until November 10 to submit its report.
LIBRA: Imbalanced Confidence discussed the origin story of the pump & dump promoted by the Argentine president, with insights into those responsible for the token launch. Back Door Men outlined the potential repercussions for Milei’s presidency, and so far, these have been minimal.
As usual in politics and especially in legal matters — Argentina and the United States both have separate investigations into LIBRA at the moment — proceedings tend to take a lot longer than the rug pulls that initiate them, but in the last couple of weeks there has been an avalanche of new evidence related to the LIBRA launch.
In an Al Jazeera interview with former Foreign Minister Diana Mondino last week, journalist Mehdi Hasan asked Mondino her thoughts regarding the LIBRA crypto scandal.
Mondino’s response was shared far and wide, and even though she tried to add more nuance to it, she could not undo her core argument:
“[Milei] should not have [posted] that [referring to the X post about LIBRA]. Someone probably told him about it and he thought it was a good idea.
“There are two possibilities. He is either not very smart, or he is corrupt in some way. You choose; I don’t know.”
Mondino went on to say that, although she hoped that the president wasn’t corrupt, he would eventually have to pay the consequences if that happened to be the case:
“He will have to go to jail one day if he is.”
It is still unclear how much Milei knew about the token and the people who stood to benefit most from its launch, and the most likely scenario is that advisors close to the President’s inner circle were complicit with the previously unknown launch meister Hayden Davis.
The rest of the article will discuss both the New York and the Argentine cases, and new on-chain transactions and off-chain evidence that points in the direction of advisors close to Milei, and whether this could eventually lead to exposing government officials higher up the food chain.