In brief
- Phone logs show seven calls between Milei and a backer of the LIBRA meme coin on its launch night, according to a New York Times report.
- WhatsApp messages reference regular payments to Milei from when he was still a congressman.
- Argentina’s federal criminal probe into the scandal remains open.
Argentine President Javier Milei’s ties to the collapsed LIBRA meme coin may run deeper than he has acknowledged, with newly surfaced phone logs showing seven calls between Milei and a key figure behind the token on the night of its launch.
Milei promoted the Solana-based token on X in February 2025, sending its market cap above $4 billion before it crashed over 90% within hours as insiders drained roughly $87 million in liquidity.
The collapse cost investors an estimated $250 million and triggered fraud charges, a congressional investigation, and a federal criminal probe that remains open.
By June 2025, Argentina’s anti-corruption office cleared Milei, ruling he acted in a personal capacity when he posted about the token.
According to a New York Times report citing initial coverage from local cable news channel C5N, the calls in question took place before and after Milei’s now-deleted post endorsing the Solana-based token at the time.
“The launch and promotion of LIBRA was not at all improvised or accidental on the part of the president,” Maximiliano Ferraro, an opposition lawmaker, told the paper. “It was a planned, coordinated and deliberately executed operation.”
Behind the scenes
The phone logs, obtained from the federal prosecutor’s investigation, show the calls took place on the night of February 14, 2025, between Milei and Mauricio Novelli, one of the entrepreneurs behind the token. Novelli also allegedly called two of Milei’s top advisers that evening, including the president’s sister Karina Milei, per the report.
WhatsApp messages recovered from Novelli’s phone point to a financial relationship way before the token’s launch.
In one 2023 audio message, Novelli told an assistant to budget “the usual 2,000 for Milei,” calling it a monthly salary, while in a separate April 2024 message he referenced “the 4,000 we need to give to Karina,” in an apparent reference to Milei’s sister, per the Times.
Draft documents found on Novelli’s phone outlined a $1.5 million payment scheme tied to Milei publicly naming Hayden Davis as a presidential adviser, the report indicates.
It’s worth noting, however, that no evidence has emerged showing Milei agreed to or received any of the payments. The Argentine president has not publicly commented on the phone logs or payment references, and has not been formally charged in relation to them.
Novelli’s lawyer, meanwhile, told the Times his client “is entirely unconnected to any wrongdoing” and is seeking to have the phone evidence excluded, arguing the device may have been tampered with in custody.
If Milei was already cleared, the new evidence could cause them to “go back and re-investigate,” Austin Campbell, founder of crypto risk and compliance advisory firm Zero Knowledge, told Decrypt, while pointing to the difficulties of doing so.
“Crypto has a deep problem with undisclosed payments, promotions, and outright scams,” Campbell said. “What we badly need is a disclosure regime for such arrangements or payments, with significant civil and criminal penalties for failing to disclose.”
Milei dissolved the government task force investigating the scandal in May last year. The federal criminal probe under prosecutor Eduardo Taiano remains open.
Decrypt has reached out to Argentina’s presidential press office for comment and will update this piece should they respond.
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