President Javier Milei of Argentina promoted a cryptocurrency last year that quickly skyrocketed in value then cratered just as fast, costing investors millions of dollars and setting off a scandal and an investigation.
Mr. Milei said he was simply highlighting a private venture and had no connection to the digital coin called $Libra.
New evidence is now raising questions about his assertion.
Phone logs from a federal investigation by Argentine prosecutors into the coin’s collapse show seven phone calls between Mr. Milei and one of the entrepreneurs behind the cryptocurrency on the night in 2025 when Mr. Milei posted about $Libra on X.
The contents of the calls, which took place before and after Mr. Milei’s post, are not known.
But the phone logs — which were obtained by The New York Times and first reported by a local cable news channel, C5N — suggest a greater degree of communication between Mr. Milei and the entrepreneurs who launched the token than what the president has publicly acknowledged. Newly uncovered messages also suggest Mr. Milei received regular payments from one of the entrepreneurs while he was a congressman.
Mr. Milei has not publicly commented on the call logs and other documents, and he did not respond to a request for comment.
He is named as a person of interest in the federal prosecutor’s ongoing investigation into the digital coin, according to court documents reviewed by The Times, but has not been formally charged with any crime.
The latest revelations have revived a scandal that threatens the very foundation of a president who rose to power and was elected president in 2023 by attacking a political class he called corrupt.
Opposition lawmakers have demanded that top officials in Mr. Milei’s government testify before Argentina’s Congress about the cryptocurrency scandal.
“The launch and promotion of $Libra was not at all improvised or accidental on the part of the president,” Maximiliano Ferraro, an opposition lawmaker who led a congressional investigation into the digital coin, told reporters recently. “It was a planned, coordinated and deliberately executed operation.”
The congressional investigation, among other things, alleges that Mr. Milei’s intervention as president was central to the currency’s initial surge in value.
Adding to the challenges facing Mr. Milei, a recording leaked to the Argentine news media and attributed to a government official alleged that the president’s sister and top adviser, Karina Milei, profited from a separate bribery scheme. The audio has not been verified, and Mr. Milei has said that the official lied.
Mr. Milei’s chief of cabinet, Manuel Adorni, is being investigated by a prosecutor over accusations of lavish travel and expenses. Mr. Adorni has denied any wrongdoing.
The $Libra scandal started after Mr. Milei posted a message on X publicizing a newly created cryptocurrency, saying it would help fund small Argentine businesses. Mr. Milei’s post included the code needed to buy the token, which does not appear to have been public at the time.
Mr. Milei’s message immediately gave the project visibility and credibility. As investors rushed to buy the coin, its value soared over several hours, but then swiftly fell. The biggest buyers had sold their coins, leaving many others with losses that totaled some $250 million.
In the cryptocurrency world it was known as a rug pull — early buyers sell at the peak, while everyone else is left with nearly worthless tokens.
Days later, a federal prosecutor opened a criminal investigation into the coin and its collapse.
Key persons of interest, according to court documents, include Mauricio Novelli, the Argentine entrepreneur behind the token who has had a long relationship with Mr. Milei, and Hayden Davis, the American consultant who assisted with Melania Trump’s memecoin launch.
Shortly after the scandal broke last year, Mr. Davis said in a statement he had acted only as an adviser to the project and did not benefit from it. Mr. Davis did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Beside Mr. Milei, his sister and other advisers were also named as people of interest of the prosecutor’s investigation, according to a person with access to the case files. The records seen by The Times show seven phone calls between Mr. Milei and Mr. Novelli on the night of $Libra’s launch, Feb. 14, 2025. Mr. Novelli also had multiple phone calls with two of Mr. Milei’s top advisers, Ms. Milei and Santiago Caputo, according to the phone logs.
Before entering politics, Mr. Milei taught at Mr. Novelli’s small investing academy in 2020, and after Mr. Milei was elected to Congress in 2021, he continued to appear in videos promoting the school.
In 2022, Mr. Milei endorsed another venture linked to Mr. Novelli — a crypto video game project, which Mr. Milei called “an economic model that’s sustainable over time.” The project collapsed within weeks with no public investigation or accusations of wrongdoing tied to it.
New messages recovered from Mr. Novelli’s phone as part of the federal prosecutor’s investigation include 2023 WhatsApp audio messages in which Mr. Novelli tells an assistant to budget for Mr. Milei, who was still a lawmaker, referring to “the usual 2,000 for Milei” and describing it as a monthly “salary.”
The WhatsApp recordings were obtained by The Times and were first published by La Nación, an Argentine newspaper.
In another audio message in April 2024, five months after Mr. Milei became Argentina’s president, Mr. Novelli told an aide about “the 4,000 we need to give to Karina.” It was an apparent reference to Mr. Milei’s sister, although the context of these and the other phone exchanges remains unclear.
Investigators working with the federal prosecutor also found draft documents on Mr. Novelli’s phone and seen by The Times pointing to potential financial arrangements between the crypto entrepreneurs — Mr. Davis and Mr. Novelli — and Mr. Milei.
One outlined a $1.5 million payment scheme tied to Mr. Milei publicly naming Mr. Davis as an adviser to the president. It was unclear from the draft to whom the payment was intended to be made. Another appears to be an unsigned letter of intent from Mr. Davis’s company offering free blockchain advisory services to the Argentine government.
No evidence has emerged showing that Mr. Milei agreed to or received these payments, or signed any contract.
Mr. Milei did post a selfie on X with Mr. Davis, saying Mr. Davis advised him on blockchain and A.I.
Hours after the post, according to records from the federal prosecutor’s investigation, Mr. Novelli texted a friend on WhatsApp saying, “I closed a tremendous deal,” although he did not specify what deal he was referring to.
Mr. Novelli’s lawyer, Daniel Rubinovich, has asked a court to exclude the entire forensic analysis of his phone, arguing that the phone could have been tampered while it was in the custody of the authorities. Mr. Novelli has not been formally charged.
Mr. Novelli “is entirely unconnected to any wrongdoing attributed to him, and there has been no improper relationship with government officials,” Mr. Rubinovich said in a WhatsApp message to The Times.
Lilia Lemoine, a lawmaker and a friend of Mr. Milei’s, said the $Libra scandal was one of several “smear operations” launched to discredit the Milei administration that ultimately went nowhere.
Leaders of the commission have also called for the ouster of Eduardo Taiano, the prosecutor leading the $Libra judicial case, accusing him of delaying the investigation and withholding key evidence.
Mr. Taiano’s office issued a rare statement defending the investigations, saying it “reaffirms its commitment to advancing the investigation, respecting due process guarantees and properly safeguarding sensitive information.”
Emma Bubola is a Times reporter covering Argentina. She is based in Buenos Aires.
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