Argentine President Javier Milei faces fraud charges over his promotion of the LIBRA cryptocurrency, which soared above a $4 billion market cap minutes after launching on Friday before crashing spectacularly just hours later.
The charges, filed Sunday in an Argentine criminal court, were brought by attorneys and political opponents of Milei, including former head of the Argentine Central Bank Claudio Lozano, according to the Associated Press.
The complaint alleges that the team behind the LIBRA cryptocurrency—a cryptocurrency investment company known as Kelsier Ventures and its CEO Hayden Davis—committed “an indeterminate number of frauds” with Milei’s involvement.
“Within this illicit association, the crime of fraud was committed, in which the president’s actions were essential,” Jonatan Baldiviezo, a lawyer and one of the plaintiffs, told the AP.
Milei originally promoted the LIBRA token on his X account late Friday along with a link to the Viva La Libertad Project website. “This private project will be dedicated to encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy by funding small Argentine businesses and startups,” Milei said in a since-deleted post.
The Argentine president’s post sent shockwaves across the crypto industry, reminiscent of US President Donald Trump’s surprise meme coin launch in late December, as traders and observers alike attempted to determine the legitimacy of the project and Milei’s post.
Crypto analytics firms such as Bubblemaps and Chainalysis raised alarms just after LIBRA’s launch, noting several red flags with the project. In particular, Bubblemaps revealed 82% of the supply of the LIBRA token was held by single cluster of wallets, meaning that a single individual—or a group of associated individuals—controlled the vast majority of the supply.
As concerns mounted, traders sold off positions, and the token crashed by 89% in value, Bubblemaps claimed the team behind the project “cashed out,” removing some $87 million in USDC and SOL, the native token of the Solana network, from liquidity pools that serviced the token.
Then, as LIBRA imploded, President Milei deleted his original post and followed up with another disavowing the project.
“A few hours ago I posted a tweet, as I have countless times before, supporting an alleged private venture with which I obviously have no connection,” he wrote in the post. “I wasn’t informed of the project’s details, and after learning about them I decided not to continue promoting it (that’s why I deleted the tweet).” The token subsequently tanked further, losing more than 96% of its value from its peak price.
The mea culpa was apparently not enough to satisfy the group of attorneys now seeking to hold Milei accountable for his actions. An Argentine court is expected to assign a judge to the case or refer it to a prosecutor on Monday, the AP reported.
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