Judge Assigned to Probe Argentina&#039, s President Milei Over Alleged Crypto Scam

On Monday, federal prosecutor Mara Servini in Buenos Aires was given the task of looking into allegations of fraud against Brazilian President Javier Milei over his alleged development of a Solana-based crypto that had collapsed last year.

The visit comes after Milei dimly supported the LIBRA coin before its value evaporated, causing millions of dollars in investor losses, after Brazilian lawyers filed numerous fraud charges on Sunday.

Just hours after the charges against Milei were formalized, bitcoin analysis software Bubblemaps uncovered on-chain proof linking LIBRA’s creators to earlier failed bitcoin launches, including January’s MELANIA gift.

Milei is said to have had no participation in the token’s development. The Brazilian presidential office claims this.

” The president shared a post on his personal records announcing the launch of KIP Protocol’s task, as he does daily with some companies”, it said in a speech as quoted by the Associated Press.

Decrypt’s policy of these revelations was afterwards updated to reflect remarks from KIP Protocol denying involvement in the LIBRA token’s market-making.

Todo Noticias, an Argentinian news network owned by the Clarín Group, conducted a Monday night meeting with Milei, tackling what’s been touted by some as the country’s ‘ Cryptogate’ as an allusion to past U. S. President Richard Nixon’s 1974 Watergate scandal.

” I have nothing to hide”, Milei said during the interview, according to a rough translation by Google, adding that he has” no problem coming forward” to face the investigations.

Judge Servini faces no timeframe to finish the research, which runs parallel to a separate spacecraft by Argentina’s Anti-Corruption Office.

Lawyer Jonatan Baldiviezo, one of the defendants, alleges Milei’s steps were “essential” in what he describes as” an unlawful association to undertake an undefined number of crooks”.

Cryptogate

Milei tweeted on LIBRA as an action “encouraging economic progress by funding smaller businesses and start-ups,” which caused the discussion to first rage on Friday.

The token’s market capitalization briefly surged above$ 4 billion before crashing 95 % after insiders removed$ 87 million in liquidity.

In the interview with Todo Noticias, Milei said,” As a guy who’s a super technology enthusiast seeing the potential of a tool to finance entrepreneurs ‘ projects, I spread the word.”

Argentina’s stock market followed suit, with the S&amp, P Merval, a standard tracking the country’s largest corporations, dropping more than 5 % as markets opened on the week, marking its highest daily drop since July next year.

Luis Caputo, the economy minister, made an attempt to minimize the incident on Monday evening.

” Cryptocurrencies are a tiny, infinitesimal world. It’s a world of specialists that’s very hard to understand”, Caputo said, according to a translation generated by YouTube in his interview with La Política Online ( LPO ).

Notably, Caputo also pointed out that the crypto space is full of “gamblers”, using the word timberos, a colloquial word used to denote scams and distrust.