Argentine President Javier Miley has been hit with legal complaints and impeachment threats after he endorsed the LIBRA cryptocurrency, which turned out to be an insider scam. According to a February 17 Associated Press report , Milei is facing criminal complaints from lawyers Marcos Zelaya and Jonatan Baldiviezo, along with engineer María Eva Koutsovitis and economist Claudio Lozano, who accuse him of fraud and violating Argentina’s Public Ethics Law. The plaintiffs claim Milei played a key role in misleading investors by promoting the token, which briefly surged before plummeting over 94% after his endorsement. A judge is expected to be assigned to the case or refer it to a prosecutor for further investigation. Meanwhile, another legal challenge has been filed by a lawyer, Agustín Rombolá, who has reported Milei for financial crimes, price manipulation, and conflicts of interest. Rombola, who is a member of the Argentine political party Unión Cívica Radical, disclosed his complaint in a February 16 X post . His firm is also preparing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of investors who lost money in what many in the crypto community are calling a pump-and-dump scheme . What is LIBRA? LIBRA was a Solana-based token tied to the Libertad project, a so-called “private initiative” that claimed it would encourage the growth of the Argentine economy. The token suddenly appeared on the market on February 14, right after Milei posted about it on X. In his now-deleted post, he linked to the project’s website and contract address, sending the token’s price into a frenzy. Investors rushed in, pushing LIBRA’s market cap to a staggering $4.56 billion within hours. But just as quickly as it pumped, it all came crashing down. Milei deleted his post, and within 11 hours, the token lost over 94% of its value, according to the Kobeissi letter . Blockchain analysts were already raising red flags before the collapse. The project’s website was created just hours before launch, and there was no public information on its founders. Further, data from the analytics platform Bubble Maps indicated that 82% of the project’s token supply was unlocked and sellable from the start—a setup typical of dubious crypto projects. According to on-chain data from Lookonchain, eight insider wallets linked to the project had started cashing out over $107 million in liquidity roughly three hours after the token started trading. This included massive withdrawals of 57.6 million USDC and 249,671 Solana that drained the market and left retail investors with worthless tokens. Milei risks impeachment The LIBRA scandal has quickly escalated into a political firestorm, with opposition lawmakers calling for Milei’s impeachment. Leading the charge is Leandro Santoro, who described the fiasco as an “international embarrassment” and insisted that the president must be held accountable. “This scandal, which embarrasses us on an international scale, requires us to launch an impeachment request against the president,” Santoro said in comments to the media on February 16. As Milei scrambles to distance himself from the fallout, more details have emerged about his prior involvement with the people behind the project. Argentina’s presidential office admitted that Milei met with representatives of KIP Protocol—the Web3 firm linked to LIBRA—on October 19, 2023. The meeting took place in Argentina, where KIP Protocol reportedly briefed the president on their blockchain initiative, which aimed to finance private ventures in the country. Adding to the intrigue, Milei also held a separate meeting at Casa Rosada on January 30 with crypto entrepreneur Hayden Mark Davis, who was introduced as an infrastructure partner for the project. Despite these connections, Milei insists he had no direct role in the project’s development or launch. His office claims he was unaware of LIBRA’s specifics when he endorsed it and that his post was meant only to support Argentina’s growing crypto sector . In an attempt to counter the backlash, Milei has requested the Anti-Corruption Office to launch an investigation into all government officials, including himself. A statement from the Argentine presidential office stated that information gathered during the investigation would be “handed over to the courts” to determine if “companies or individuals” linked to the KIP Protocol project had committed a crime. The post Argentine president might face impeachment trial over $107M LIBRA pump-and-dump scheme appeared first on Invezz