BUENOS AIRES — In a significant legal development for the current administration, Federal Judge Marcelo Martínez De Giorgi on Friday officially dismissed all criminal charges against Argentine President Javier Milei, Presidential Chief of Staff Karina Milei, and nine other co-defendants. The ruling brings a definitive judicial halt to the high-profile investigation surrounding the launch and subsequent dramatic collapse of the controversial $LIBRA cryptocurrency project, an episode that had cast a heavy shadow over the executive branch since early 2025.
The presiding judge determined that the reported events and market fluctuations under scrutiny did not fit the legal definition of a criminal offense. In reaching this conclusion, Judge Martínez De Giorgi ruled precisely in line with the formal request submitted earlier by federal prosecutor Eduardo Taiano, who had argued that the extensive judicial inquiry failed to uncover actionable evidence of criminal behavior or intentional fraud on the part of the nation’s highest-ranking officials and their co-accused.
The underlying crypto scandal first erupted in the early months of 2025, quickly dominating headlines across South America and the international financial press. The controversy began when the Argentine president publicly promoted a newly launched digital asset on social media. Hours after receiving this high-profile endorsement, the token plummeted dramatically in value, wiping out millions of dollars in market capitalization and leaving thousands of retail investors nursing severe financial losses.
According to allegations lodged by aggrieved parties during the early stages of the controversy, the developers of $LIBRA allegedly withdrew approximately US$100 million from the project liquidity pools during the brief window of peak valuation. This sequence of events immediately triggered intense public outcry and accusations from political opponents and victims alike, who characterized the operation as a textbook “pump and dump” financial scheme, alongside serious allegations of insider trading involving figures close to the seat of government.
Alongside the Milei siblings, the sweeping judicial dismissal applies comprehensively to all other individuals who had been placed under formal investigation by federal authorities. This group included prominent domestic crypto entrepreneurs Mauricio Novelli and Manuel Terrones Godoy, as well as Hayden Mark Davis, a United States-based cryptocurrency expert who had been identified by investigators as a central promoter and driving force behind the creation and marketing of the $LIBRA token.
In his comprehensive written ruling, Martínez de Giorgi concluded that all defendants deserved to be permanently dismissed from the case because the prosecutor’s definitive legal opinion maintained that there was simply no probative evidence of a crime warranting the continuation of judicial proceedings. The court found that the initial suspicions, while politically and socially volatile, lacked the concrete evidentiary foundation required under Argentine criminal law to sustain formal charges of fraud or unlawful market manipulation.
Deception Was Not Proven in Court
One of the most complex and heavily debated legal hurdles in the case was determining whether the public promotion of $LIBRA, its meteoric initial price surge, and its subsequent catastrophic collapse were part of an organized, premeditated conspiracy specifically intended to inflict financial harm on everyday buyers.
The initial criminal complaint centered heavily on a specific digital message posted by President Milei on his official account on the social media platform X on February 14, 2025. According to the complainants, this presidential endorsement served as the primary catalyst that drove up the token’s market value. Data cited in the case files showed that the asset rose rapidly from an initial nominal value of approximately one cent to nearly five dollars per token before collapsing violently back toward zero.
Proponents of the legal action argued that this trajectory was evidence of malicious intent, pointing out that wallets allegedly linked to the project’s internal promoters had successfully withdrawn around US$100 million from the ecosystem while more than 40,000 retail buyers suffered devastating financial losses.
However, the public prosecution service adopted a far more rigorous legal standard, arguing before the court that an adverse financial outcome or a volatile market crash is not, in and of itself, sufficient to legally establish criminal fraud. The prosecution’s detailed legal analysis maintained that to secure an indictment or press forward with a criminal trial, investigators were required to demonstrate what the specific deception had been, the precise mechanisms by which it had misled ordinary buyers, and how that deception had directly prompted their individual investment decisions.
Judge Martínez De Giorgi ultimately adopted that exact judicial reasoning in his final verdict. He noted in his opinion that while the president’s public promotion may have undeniably exerted a significant influence on the project’s public exposure, visibility, and market traction, that circumstance alone did not legally establish the existence of a coordinated fraudulent enterprise.
In addressing this critical distinction, the court’s ruling stated explicitly that the prominence of the person promoting a financial asset, the intense public attention surrounding its launch, or the natural trust that their personal or institutional involvement might inspire do not, in themselves, constitute a fraudulent scheme under the law.
The judge further elaborated that it was legally necessary for the accusers to identify which specific aspect of the project, its underlying technology, or its operational structure had been presented in a demonstrably deceptive manner, or what material, relevant financial information had allegedly been intentionally withheld from the investing public.
Addressing the core narrative put forward by the complainants, the ruling emphasized that the mere sequence of events involving a high-profile promotion, a sudden and sharp increase in a token’s market price, and its subsequent steep decline does not, by its very nature, demonstrate that this volatile trajectory had been organized and orchestrated in advance for fraudulent purposes.
Furthermore, the federal judge cited an important precedent previously established by the Federal Court of Appeals. That higher appellate body had previously warned that the initial theoretical framework—which posited an organized financial scheme orchestrated from the highest levels of the federal government—had steadily weakened over time when rigorously assessed against the strict legal requirements necessary for establishing the crime of fraud in digital asset markets.
With the dismissal of all charges by Judge Martínez De Giorgi and the full alignment of the judicial branch with the prosecution’s findings, the legal proceedings against the executive branch and the co-defendants have been brought to a close, marking a definitive end to one of the most politically sensitive crypto-related legal battles of the Milei administration’s tenure.
