Argentinian Judge Freezes Funds Of CEO After Evidence Links Him To Libra's Scam

The CEO of Kelsier Ventures and advisor of the President of Argentina, Hayden Davis, has found his digital assets frozen after prosecutors found evidence that linked him to the Libra memecoin scandal.

During the investigation, investigators discovered that Davis had transferred $507,500 out of his wallet via crypto exchange Bitget. While there isn't evidence who the recipient of the funds was, authorities suspect that the funds were transferred to government officials, which might include the government himself.

This suspicion is even more prominent given how the funds were transferred just 42 minutes after President Milei posted a viral selfies with David in February. In the post, Milei called Davis as an “advisor on blockchain and AI,” lending an air of legitimacy to what was then promoted as an innovative project designed to “empower small businesses” in Argentina.

Prosecutors suspect that Davis’s associates — identified as Favio Camilo Rodríguez Blanco and Orlando Rodolfo Mellino — acted as “exit ramps” to obscure the flow of money, effectively laundering funds through intermediaries.

Blanco, investigators claim, was caught moving physical cash through safe-deposit boxes only hours after Libra’s spectacular collapse — an event that erased nearly all of the token’s multi-billion-dollar valuation within a single day.

The asset freeze, authorized by Argentina’s Secretariat for Financial Investigation and Recovery of Illicit Assets and the General Directorate of Asset Confiscation, will remain in place until the case is resolved.

From Political Promotion to Public Backlash

Launched in early February, the Libra token was marketed as an innovative, pro-entrepreneurial initiative backed by Milei’s administration. Its rollout was accompanied by slick branding, patriotic rhetoric, and the president’s social media endorsements — all of which helped it explode to a multi-billion-dollar market cap in a matter of hours.

But the optimism was short-lived. Within days, the token’s value crashed by more than 90%, leaving retail investors furious and forcing Milei to delete his promotional posts.

Since then, excitement has turned to outrage, as critics blamed Milei’s for their losses, an event that has damaged Argentina’s credibility in the global crypto space. Documents also revealed that the Argentinian President even said he wanted to "montize the image of the President", making his role in this whole sage even more suspicious.

According to leaked filings, Argentine lobbyist Mauricio Novelli reportedly pitch to Milei the idea of using his personal brand to “generate revenue streams” months before Libra’s launch, claiming that such initiatives would not breach public ethics laws because Milei’s image was a “personal asset.”

Adding to the controversy, blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps uncovered that wallets tied to the Libra project were also active in the launch of Melania Trump’s meme coin, which debuted weeks earlier on the Solana blockchain.

Both tokens exhibited nearly identical on-chain behavior — with overlapping wallet clusters, identical liquidity movement patterns, and suspiciously timed transactions — suggesting that the same network of developers or financiers may have been behind both projects.

The finding has amplified speculation that Libra was not an independent Argentine project at all, but rather part of a global meme coin operation using political and celebrity endorsements to legitimize speculative schemes.

U.S. Investigation: A Different Framing of the Same Story

While Argentina’s investigation zeroes in on the political and ethical implications surrounding President Milei, the parallel U.S. case takes a markedly different tone. American prosecutors have focused primarily on Benjamin Chow, co-founder of Meteora, branding him the “mastermind” behind both the Melania and Libra meme coin launches.

Court documents in the U.S. suggest that Davis and Kelsier Ventures only acted under Chow’s instructions, serving as operational facilitators rather than decision-makers.

The American class-action lawsuit frames Milei and Melania Trump as victims of the case, unwitting figures whose public personas were exploited to lend credibility to fraudulent projects.

Earlier this year, the U.S. courts temporarily froze $58 million in crypto assets linked to Davis and Chow. However, those funds were later released in August after the presiding judge stated she was “skeptical” that the plaintiffs could prove the fraud allegations to the standard required under U.S. law.

Despite this softer stance, the American proceedings have kept international attention fixed on the broader web of actors allegedly coordinating these meme coin operations.

A Tale of Two Cases

The diverging narratives highlight a geopolitical contrast: while U.S. prosecutors frame Libra as a financial fraud case, Argentine authorities view it as a potential political corruption scandal implicating the highest levels of government.

In Argentina, public outrage continues to grow amid questions about whether the president or his allies indirectly benefited from Libra’s hype. Meanwhile, the U.S. investigation portrays the same events as part of a larger, cross-border meme coin network orchestrated by private actors exploiting public figures.

For now, Hayden Davis, Mauricio Novelli, and Manuel Terrones Godoy have not responded to media inquiries. Both investigations remain active, and as the legal processes unfold on two continents, the Libra affair stands as a stark warning of how crypto hype, politics, and personal branding can intertwine — with consequences that extend far beyond token charts.