An Argentine federal judge has dismissed the criminal case arising from President Javier Milei’s promotion of the LIBRA token, ruling that prosecutors had not established conduct meeting the country’s legal standard for fraud or other alleged offences. The Oct. 23 decision closes a 20-month inquiry involving Milei, his sister and presidential secretary Karina Milei, and nine other people, even as blockchain data shows LIBRA’s collapse left tens of thousands of wallets in loss.
Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi accepted prosecutor Eduardo Taiano’s request to dismiss the case under Article 336(3) of Argentina’s criminal procedure code. In a ruling of about 60 pages, the judge found insufficient evidence of fraudulent deception, abuse of public office, influence peddling, or illicit negotiations tied to the project.
The outcome gives Milei a major legal victory in the country’s highest-profile cryptocurrency controversy, while leaving the financial damage from the token’s swift boom and crash outside the scope of the criminal proceedings.
Court finds no criminal fraud scheme
Martínez de Giorgi’s ruling said the LIBRA project existed, the token was issued on Solana, and its transactions could be traced on-chain. The court also noted that the project did not promise purchasers fixed returns, a point central to its conclusion that losses alone did not prove criminal fraud.
The judge acknowledged that a post by a sitting president could create public exposure and encourage trust in a token. Yet political standing, public attention and the confidence generated by a prominent endorsement did not, by themselves, establish a scheme to deceive buyers, the ruling said.
The court further concluded that LIBRA’s price decline and the eventual distribution of profits and losses could not independently demonstrate a crime. A sharp market reversal, even one followed by substantial losses, did not establish that the token had been promoted through legally actionable fraud under the evidence presented.
The ruling also found no proof that Milei used public resources, carried out an official government act, or abused presidential authority in connection with the promotion. It referred to an Anti-Corruption Office finding that Milei’s LIBRA post was made through a personal social-media account.
Claims involving Karina Milei were also dismissed. The judge said the evidence did not show that she had received payments connected to the project. Arranging contacts or helping to organize meetings, the ruling added, did not by itself amount to influence peddling.
None of the people under examination was formally summoned for interrogation during the inquiry.
A token launch followed by an abrupt crash
The LIBRA controversy began on Feb. 14, 2025, when Milei posted on X about the “Viva la Libertad Project,” presenting it as an initiative intended to support Argentine small businesses. The post included LIBRA’s contract address after the token had been deployed on Solana.
According to the timeline cited in the case, the token was created at 21:38 UTC and Milei’s post containing its contract address appeared at 22:01 UTC. LIBRA quickly rose to about $4.50, briefly reaching a market value of roughly $4.6 billion.
The rally lasted hours rather than days. About 11 hours after launch, wallets linked to the team sold tokens and removed USDC and SOL from liquidity pools, according to the supplied on-chain account of events. LIBRA’s price subsequently fell by more than 94%.
Milei later deleted his post and said he had not understood the token’s internal mechanics and had no ties to the project. His promotion nevertheless triggered a political backlash in Argentina, where opposition figures pursued impeachment efforts and Congress created an investigative body.
During a Feb. 17, 2025 interview with TN television, Milei said that “at most 5,000 people” had been harmed and claimed most participants were based in China and the United States. He also said he had acted in good faith. Cointelegraph reported at the time, citing on-chain checks, that more than 15,000 wallets had registered a LIBRA profit or loss exceeding $1,000.
Nansen later estimated that around 86% of traders in LIBRA lost money. Its data covered roughly 114,000 wallets and put aggregate losses at about $251 million.
Separate us class action also dismissed
The Argentine ruling follows the dismissal of a separate US civil case earlier in October. On Oct. 2, US federal judge Jennifer L. Rochon dismissed a proposed class action against Kelsier Ventures, Solana-based defi platform Meteora and developer Benjamin Chow. The court also denied the plaintiffs’ request to submit an amended complaint.
The US action concerned private-sector figures associated with the token’s launch and liquidity arrangements rather than a criminal allegation against Argentina’s president. Its dismissal, alongside the Argentine decision, leaves no active case described in the supplied record that has produced a legal finding allocating responsibility for LIBRA buyers’ losses.
Earlier proceedings had produced several contested developments. The New York Times reported in April 2025 that Argentine prosecutors obtained call logs showing seven conversations between Milei and intermediary Mauricio Novelli on Feb. 14, around the period when the LIBRA contract address was shared publicly. The newspaper also reported on a draft $5 million promotional agreement linked to the project.
An Argentine judge ordered asset freezes for key project figures in May 2025 and expanded scrutiny of financial activity tied to Milei and Karina Milei. That same month, Milei and Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona dissolved a special task force that had been established in February to examine the scandal, saying it had completed its mandate.
A US court lifted a freeze over a combined $57.6 million in USDC associated with Kelsier Ventures head Hayden Davis and Meteora founder Benjamin Chow in August 2025.
Draft agreement did not meet the criminal threshold
A March 2026 Argentine judicial update said investigators recovered an unsigned draft agreement from a phone seized from Novelli. The document, written three days before Milei’s X post, outlined a proposed $5 million arrangement.
The draft described a $1.5 million prepayment in tokens or cash, another $1.5 million payment conditioned on Milei naming Davis as an adviser on social media, and a final $2 million tied to Milei and Karina Milei signing an in-person contract for blockchain or artificial-intelligence government consulting. Investigators also recovered notes and other unsigned materials from the device.
Martínez de Giorgi’s decision indicates that these materials, along with the calls and other evidence reviewed during the inquiry, did not establish the criminal elements required for prosecution. The court’s conclusion does not change the trading record: a token promoted by a president reached multibillion-dollar paper value before collapsing more than 90%, with Nansen estimating losses across the vast majority of participating wallets.
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