Criminal Complaint Put Milei’s $LIBRA Promotion Before Argentine Courts

Four complainants filed a criminal complaint against Argentine President Javier Milei on February 16, 2025, asking the federal judiciary to investigate his promotion of the $LIBRA token and the circumstances surrounding its rapid rise and collapse.

The complaint marked a consequential change in the episode’s institutional status. Milei’s February 14 social-media post had helped draw attention to a newly launched cryptoasset presented as part of a project for financing Argentine businesses. By February 16, the controversy was no longer confined to token markets, political criticism or an executive-branch review: private complainants had placed alleged criminal conduct before Argentina’s courts.

No court had ruled that Milei or any other person committed a crime on February 16. The filing contained allegations and requests for investigation, not judicial findings.

What the complainants alleged

The complaint was submitted by lawyers Jonatan Emanuel Baldiviezo and Marcos Zelaya, civil engineer María Eva Koutsovitis and economist Claudio Lozano. It asked authorities to examine possible offenses including illicit association, fraud and other forms of deception, breach of public duties and violations of Argentina’s public-ethics law.

Their theory was that Milei’s public endorsement supplied credibility and visibility to the token as part of a coordinated operation. They characterized the market sequence as a suspected “rug pull,” a term commonly applied when token promoters attract buyers before insiders or controlling parties remove liquidity or sell into the resulting demand.

That characterization remained the complainants’ claim. The surviving event-day record did not establish who controlled every relevant wallet, whether particular sales were coordinated, what each participant knew before launch or whether the legal elements of the alleged offenses were satisfied.

The filing requested preservation and examination of digital evidence. Reported requests included retaining records from Milei’s X account, tracing $LIBRA transactions, identifying beneficiaries, examining relevant electronic devices and restricting implicated wallets or bank accounts. A complaint can propose such measures, but their inclusion did not mean a judge had authorized them on February 16.

The government’s competing account

Argentina’s presidency had issued its own account on February 15. It acknowledged that Milei met KIP Protocol representatives on October 19, 2024 and Hayden Mark Davis on January 30, 2025. The presidency said the proposed project was described as a blockchain-based financing initiative for private ventures.

The executive denied that Milei participated in developing the cryptocurrency. It said he shared the launch because he regularly publicized entrepreneurial projects, then removed the post after learning more and seeing the reaction. The statement also referred the matter to the Anti-Corruption Office and announced plans for a task unit covering cryptoassets, financial activity and money laundering.

Those statements documented meetings and the government’s stated position; they did not independently prove that the president lacked involvement. Conversely, the criminal complaint documented what the complainants alleged; it did not prove their fraud theory. On February 16, the conflict between those accounts was unresolved.

Why the filing mattered beyond one token

The episode exposed how quickly a public official’s endorsement could become part of a digital-asset market event. Permissionless trading allowed $LIBRA to circulate without the disclosure, underwriting or market surveillance normally associated with a conventional securities offering. Political authority nevertheless supplied a powerful signal to potential buyers.

Reliable market measurement remained difficult. Contemporaneous reports agreed that the token rose sharply and then collapsed within hours, but published price, capitalization, wallet-count and loss estimates used inconsistent timestamps and methodologies. The complaint’s victim and loss figures were allegations without a reproducible event-day calculation, so they are not treated as verified market data here.

Later context

On February 17, 2025, the first complaint was assigned to Judge María Servini of Federal Court No. 1 in Buenos Aires. That assignment began the next procedural stage; it did not validate the accusations or determine criminal liability.