Argentina court dismisses Milei LIBRA criminal case after 20-month probe

An Argentine federal judge has closed the criminal file on one of the most politically charged token collapses of recent years. Federal Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi dismissed the proceedings against President Javier Milei, his sister Karina Milei and nine other people on Friday, accepting a request from prosecutor Eduardo Taiano. Reuters, working from court records, reports the judge acted after Taiano sought dismissal, while CoinDesk puts the cleared total at 11, none of whom had been formally questioned as suspects. The ruling does not call LIBRA a sound investment. It makes a narrower criminal-law point: the facts investigated did not amount to a crime.

That distinction is the whole case.

Martínez de Giorgi accepted that a head of state's backing could amplify a launch — CoinDesk cites his phrase "greater impact" — yet he held that amplification, plus a price crash, proved nothing on its own. Fraud needed proof of one particular deception, and the court found that proof missing. The Buenos Aires Times paraphrases his core holding: the events described did not constitute a criminal offence. Abuse-of-authority claims fell too, since the post came with no administrative act and no state resources. On Karina Milei, accused of setting up promoter meetings for payment, the judge found too little evidence she took money for access. Arranging a contact, he wrote, is not by itself influence peddling.

Milei answered in public, not through a spokesman. According to the Buenos Aires Times, he posted a philosopher's line about truth triumphing alone, then demanded compensation for a year, eight months and nine days of false accusations aimed at his reputation. February 14, 2025 to October 23, 2026 matches that count exactly. His office told CoinDesk the judge had granted the prosecutor's request because the acts examined were not a crime, calling a probe opened before the 2025 midterms an election-year attack. Reuters records his crash-era defence: he insisted his intentions had been honest and blamed rivals for exploiting the episode. Criminal law has now sided with that defence. Politics has not finished with it.

Background: how the LIBRA story developed

LIBRA started with a presidential post, not a prospectus. On February 14, 2025, Milei promoted the Solana token on X as a way to back small Argentine firms. The Buenos Aires Times quotes his post: "The world wants to invest in Argentina. $LIBRA." He deleted it hours later while the price fell. CoinDesk reports the token touched about $5, then fell by over 95 percent, with wealth destroyed put above $250 million. Eight wallets tied to the token's creator took out roughly $99 million in crypto, researchers found. Hayden Davis, the American businessman who said he advised the launch, put his own post-crash stash near $100 million and denied any wrongdoing.

February 2025 also supplied the allegation that sustained the case for 20 months. CoinDesk reported then that it had seen messages in which Davis boasted of buying access to Milei's inner circle, claimed he had paid Karina Milei, and said he could sway presidential decisions. Davis denied paying either sibling. Reuters notes a judge was assigned that month to examine Milei's role. Later stages explain why Friday's order is not quite final: in July the judge struck investor plaintiffs from the case, an appeals court upheld that move in September, and those investors are now challenging their removal at the Federal Criminal Cassation Court. CoinDesk reports reinstatement would let them contest the dismissal, which Taiano himself is not expected to appeal.

A separate track already closed in the United States: in September, a New York court threw out a class action against LIBRA's backers at first instance, citing flaws in the filing, the Buenos Aires Times notes. Courts so far have refused to treat a famous-name token crash, without proven deception or a properly framed claim, as a wrong the law will pay for. Industry voices called it a "rug pull". A market label is not a verdict.

Why it matters

For Argentina, the ruling gives a sitting president room he lacked for 20 months: a criminal file over a market comment distorts every economic announcement after it, because opponents can always ask whether policy or self-defence is driving the statement. Lifting it changes the question, not the scrutiny. For crypto, the lesson is narrower than any price call — an endorsement can create a market in hours, yet liability still turns on deception proved with evidence, not loss measured in dollars. Compare Bybit's Dubai approval: a regulator granted a defined, limited permission, spot trading only, before trading began. Argentina's court decided after a crash what existing law forbids. Between a permission granted in advance and a prosecution tested afterwards sits a gap, and LIBRA lived in it.

The court answered guilt. It did not answer governance.

What the numbers show

Two loss tallies circulate, and they should not be blended. CoinDesk puts wealth destroyed above $250 million. The Buenos Aires Times estimates investor losses at about $100 million. Different methods, different totals — the gap warns about post-crash accounting when entry prices vary across thousands of buyers, not an error to average away.

A drop beyond 95% from about $5 leaves less than $0.25 for a buyer who bought near the top and held on. The $99 million moved through eight creator-linked wallets equals 39.6% of the $250 million wealth figure — a large share for a few wallets, though the two measures cannot be subtracted from each other. That $99 million also sits close in size to the $100 million loss estimate: a coincidence of scale, not evidence they describe the same money.

Saturday's snapshot adds one more layer: Bitcoin at $79,437, down 2.47%, Ether at $2,295, down 4.35%, and gold at $3,996.90, up 0.04% — thin risk appetite, not a reaction to this ruling.