$LIBRA Investor Challenges Decision to Close Probe Involving Javier Milei

The appeal over Argentina’s $LIBRA token turns on a narrow but consequential question: whether investigators assessed the evidence linking President Javier Milei’s social media promotion to activity around the token’s launch. The dispute isn’t simply over what the evidence shows. It’s also about whether investigators and the judge considered separate pieces of information together before deciding the case should end.

Juan Patricio Marchetto, an investor who says he lost money in the cryptocurrency’s collapse, has challenged a ruling to dismiss the investigation into Milei, his sister and Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei, and nine other defendants. His 40-page filing was submitted by lawyers Juan Grabois, who’s also a lawmaker, and Nicolás Rechanik. The challenge now faces an initial procedural obstacle: Marchetto was removed from the proceedings as a private prosecutor, and a court has upheld that decision.

Appeal focuses on evidence around Milei’s post

The investigation concerned suspected fraud and possible financial offences involving the $LIBRA memecoin. Its value rose before plunging after Milei promoted it in a post on X on February 14, 2025, prompting allegations that buyers had been defrauded. That sequence gives the appeal its central point of inquiry: whether the promotion was connected to activity by people involved in the token’s launch, or whether the timing alone is being asked to carry more weight than it can bear.

Marchetto argues that federal judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi treated a lack of sufficient evidence as proof that no crime had occurred. He also says the judge selected evidence selectively and gave inadequate reasons for ending the case. Those are distinct criticisms. One challenges the standard used to close the investigation; the other questions whether the ruling explained how it reached its conclusion.

The appeal highlights telephone records that, according to the filing, show three calls from project-linked businessman Mauricio Novelli to Milei and a call back from the President in the minutes before the post. It also cites 87 transactions across 74 cryptocurrency wallets, totaling about US$13.5 million, recorded seconds before Milei shared the token’s purchase code. The filing presents these details as evidence that deserves to be assessed in context. Their presence in an appeal, however, doesn’t by itself establish who controlled the wallets or what the calls concerned.

Marchetto says investigators should have considered the calls, transactions and presidential post together to assess whether Milei coordinated with people behind the launch. That argument reflects a familiar difficulty in cases involving online promotions and digital assets: individual records can look ambiguous, while their timing and relationship may matter when examined as a sequence. The question is whether further investigation could clarify those links, not whether the details listed in the filing already settle the matter.

He is also seeking further inquiry into where the funds went and completion of forensic reviews of electronic devices connected to other figures in the case. Those requests point to gaps he believes remain in the record. And this is the part most people overlook: a dismissal can turn on whether investigators pursued available lines of inquiry, as well as on the evidence they had collected.

Dismissal remains subject to a standing dispute

Martínez de Giorgi ordered the case closed and archived last Friday once the ruling becomes final, accepting prosecutor Eduardo Taiano’s request to dismiss proceedings against all 11 defendants. None had been summoned to make formal statements as suspects. Those covered by the decision include Novelli, US entrepreneur Hayden Mark Davis and former National Securities Commission adviser Sergio Morales. The order therefore addresses the investigation as a whole, while the appeal focuses on whether its handling left important questions unresolved.

Marchetto was previously removed from the proceedings as a private prosecutor, and a federal court upheld that decision. Argentina’s Federal Court of Criminal Cassation is still reviewing his status, leaving open whether he has the legal standing required to appeal. That procedural question could determine whether a court considers his arguments about the evidence at all.

If the court recognises his standing, a higher court could examine the dismissal before the case is definitively closed. If it doesn’t, the appeal may fail without a review of the claims about calls, transactions or investigative work. The next step therefore depends not only on the arguments about the evidence, but also on whether Marchetto is permitted to bring them.

What the appeal could clarify

This is more significant than it looks. The appeal puts pressure on the reasoning behind the dismissal, but it doesn’t amount to a finding that Milei or any other defendant committed an offence. A review could instead focus on whether the judge addressed the evidence and the requested investigative steps adequately, subject to Marchetto first establishing his standing.

If you’re working in this space, the distinction matters: a court’s decision about whether a case should remain open is different from a decision about guilt. For readers, the immediate issue is whether the appeal reaches a judge who can assess its merits. The allegations remain allegations, and the available information here doesn’t resolve who was behind the transactions or what the calls concerned.

For now, the case sits between two questions: whether the investigation left enough unanswered to justify further scrutiny, and whether Marchetto can ask a higher court to scrutinize it. The evidence described in his filing may be central if that review proceeds. For the moment, unresolved procedural questions stand in its way. A matter of access to review.