LIBRA case dismissed: Argentine Judge Clears Milei Over Memecoin

LIBRA case dismissed: an Argentine federal judge has thrown out the criminal investigation into President Javier Milei over the $LIBRA memecoin he promoted on X in February 2025. Judge Marcelo Martinez de Giorgi ruled on Friday, October 23, that the reported events "do not constitute a criminal offence," and the dismissal also covers Karina Milei, launch adviser Hayden Davis and eight others.

What actually happened

The story goes back to February 14, 2025. Milei posted about a little-known Solana memecoin called $LIBRA and shared its contract address. The token ripped, then collapsed within hours. Milei deleted the post, denied any link to the project and later said he had acted "in good faith."

Complaints filed in court claimed thousands of buyers lost money. Perfil reports filings alleging more than 40,000 buyers took losses and that a small group of wallets pulled out close to $100 million. Those claims were part of the investigation and were never proven by a court.

On Friday, Martinez de Giorgi, who runs Federal Criminal and Correctional Court No. 8, ended the probe. Perfil says the ruling relies on article 336, clause 3 of Argentina's criminal procedure code, which allows dismissal when the investigated facts are not a crime. The judge said Milei's institutional standing could have given the launch "greater impact," but that does not turn a post into a fraudulent scheme. The BBC reported he found no "criminally relevant deception."

Who was cleared

Perfil lists eleven people covered by the decision: Javier and Karina Milei, businessman Mauricio Novelli, Manuel Terrones Godoy, Sergio Daniel Morales, US entrepreneur Hayden Davis, Chyi Haur Peh (known as Julian Peh), and four others.

Davis, who called himself a "launch adviser" for the token, has acknowledged holding close to $100 million after the crash and denies wrongdoing, according to Al Jazeera. The judge dismissed the investigation into him as well.

The presidency celebrated loudly. Its official statement No. 171 called the case a "sad media circus" that lasted one year, eight months and nine days, and asked who would take responsibility for the time and money spent on it.

A court saying something was not a crime is not the same as saying buyers were treated fairly. For memecoin traders, those are two separate questions.

Why the LIBRA case dismissed ruling matters for memecoins

For crypto Twitter, $LIBRA became the textbook case of a celebrity or politician shilling a token that insiders were ready to dump. The ruling does not change what happened on-chain. It says that, under Argentine criminal law and on the evidence this court reviewed, promoting the coin was not a crime.

That is a big signal for anyone hoping regulators or courts will clean up influencer launches after the fact. In this case, they did not. The lesson is the same one our memecoin lifecycle study keeps showing: most coins peak fast and bleed, and the people who arrive last carry the losses.

Politics and memecoins keep colliding in the US too, as our Trump gala dinner piece showed. The LIBRA case dismissed headline may embolden more public figures to post contract addresses, because the legal risk in at least one country just looked smaller.

What it does not settle

This decision is not the end of every $LIBRA dispute everywhere. Perfil notes it can be appealed and is limited to the proceedings examined by that court. Civil claims and actions in other countries are separate matters, and we have not verified their status, so we are not going to guess.

It also does not prove anyone innocent of everything, despite how the presidency framed it. It says the facts reported did not fit a criminal offense.

What to do as a reader

Treat any coin pushed by a politician, celebrity or "adviser" as the highest-risk trade on your screen, not the safest. A famous name drives attention, and attention is exactly what early holders sell into.

Before you ape, check who holds the supply, how much liquidity sits in the pool and whether the deployer or insiders got tokens early. If you cannot answer those questions, the right size is zero. Do not count on a court, a regulator or a deleted post to make you whole later. This is not investment advice.

Sources: Al Jazeera and Reuters, Perfil and the Argentine presidency statement.