Crypto Lobbyist Paid Milei ₱119,409 ($2,000) Monthly Before Presidency

Forensic evidence from crypto lobbyist Mauricio Novelli's phone shows he paid Argentina President Javier Milei ₱119,409 ($2,000) monthly starting in June 2023, when Milei served as a national deputy.

The payments doubled to $4,000 by April 2, 2024, four months after Milei won the presidency in November 2023. That's when Novelli instructed his secretary to gather cash for Karina Milei, the president's sister and chief of staff.

Novelli ran N&W Professional Traders and hired Milei to teach Zoom classes on financial education and cryptocurrencies starting in late 2021. Text messages recovered by Argentina's Directorate of Technological Support for Criminal Investigation show repeated references to the payments. On August 1, 2023, Novelli messaged his secretary: "We have to pay Milei's $2,000 as always." That was twelve days before the primary elections.

The scandal broke after Milei promoted the Libra memecoin in February 2025. The token collapsed within hours of launch, with millions in profits going to insiders. Congressional investigations and criminal probes followed. Forensic evidence later linked Milei's messages to memecoin promoters minutes before and after the Libra launch.

Milei promoted Vulcano Game on February 18, 2022, calling it a "very interesting" project with a "sustainable economic diagram over time, unlike the vast majority." Novelli had launched that token in late 2021. It later collapsed amid fraud allegations.

Milei repeatedly denied wrongdoing in both cases. But Novelli met him at Casa Rosada on September 20, 2024, taking a selfie at the presidential residence. Thirteen months after the Libra collapse, N&W Professional Traders still used Milei's recorded classes in its curriculum.