Argentine Congress approves an investigation into President Milei’s involvement in the LIBRA token collapse

What’s new? Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies has voted in favor of investigating the country’s top officials after the Libra meme token, promoted by President Javier Milei on his social networks, collapsed in February with great damage to investors. Deputies approved the approval of draft resolutions that will allow the establishment of a special commission, whose members will investigate the possible involvement of Milei and his entourage in the fraudulent scheme.

Statement on the government portal

What else is known? 128 deputies voted in favor of the creation of the investigative commission, 93 against, and 7 abstained. Gabriel Bornoroni, a member of the La Libertad Avanza coalition, defended the president during the debate, claiming that the opposition is intentionally “creating a show” around the token incident.

In his view, the systemic opposition seeks to use the scandal in a political fight against the president, given that his team has successfully managed to deliver a budget surplus throughout last year.

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The deputies’ vote came almost two months after Milei promoted Libra, a meme token based on the Solana blockchain, in his X account. In his post, he noted that it was a private project to boost Argentina’s economic growth by funding startups.

After that, Libra’s capitalization began to rise sharply and reached the $4,5 billion mark, but then collapsed 90% in just a few hours on the night of February 14-15. Shortly after the collapse, Milei deleted his post and said he did not know details about the project.

Two days later, a fraud lawsuit was filed in an Argentine court over the incident. As a result of the crash, about 75 000 crypto wallet owners suffered losses of over $250 million.

The congressmen’s initiative is launched while the court is still conducting its own investigation to uncover potential links between Milei and the asset’s developers. In March, the Argentine Prosecutor’s Office requested a $110 million freezeon the Libra team’s assets.

That same month, an Argentine attorney called for the arrest of Hayden Davis, CEO of venture capital firm Kelsier Ventures, who allegedly introduced the Libra project to Milei during their face-to-face meeting in January.

This month, New York-based law firm Burwick Law urged investors to join a class action lawsuit against the Libra team, which it filed in state Supreme Court.

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This isn’t the first cryptocurrency-related scandal for Milei. In 2022, he was sued by investors for promoting a crypto investment platform, CoinX, which failed to live up to its promises of paying high interest on income programs.