$LIBRA Scandal: Prosecutor Taiano and the Phantom Trust Hiding US$110 Million

Nearly 500 days into the biggest crypto scandal that directly implicates President Javier Milei, Argentina’s federal justice system is still taking a nap. The $LIBRA token, personally promoted by Milei on February 14, 2025, left thousands of investors—many of them SMEs—with millions in losses. While the victims await answers, the case progresses at the pace of an anesthetized snail. Prosecutor Eduardo Taiano accumulates delays, silences, and complaints of alleged cover-up. And every passing day plays into the hands of those who handled the money.

This Sunday, the existence of The Libra Trust was revealed, a trust created by Hayden Davis in a tax haven that now hides the fate of US$110 million belonging to investors. An anonymous administrator refuses to disclose where the money is, who controls it, and who its true beneficiaries are. The Libra Trust was born in November 2025, just days after a New York judge lifted a freeze on digital funds linked to the case. It was presented as a tool to face lawsuits in Argentina and the United States. However, its design raises more questions than answers: there is no clear public data on final beneficiaries, no transparent control mechanisms, its administrator remains hidden, and the funds were encapsulated in an offshore structure that makes tracking the money trail much harder.

This is not an administrative detail. It is exactly the kind of financial engineering that turns a slow investigation into a race against the clock. Because the more time passes, the harder it becomes to reconstruct the money’s journey and the greater the chances that those funds will end up permanently beyond the reach of justice.

Eduardo Taiano has been a federal prosecutor since 1993. He has plenty of experience. What is lacking in the $LIBRA case are results. The forensic analysis of Mauricio Novelli’s cell phone—which revealed communications with Javier Milei, Karina Milei, and Santiago Caputo, as well as a draft of an alleged US$5 million agreement—took months to be added to the case file. The UFECI needed eight months to analyze transfers of nearly US$4.8 million, citing a lack of software. Almost two years later, there have been no relevant interrogations or progress proportional to the magnitude of the scandal. The money traveled much faster than the investigation.

Complainant Martín Romeo reported Taiano for alleged cover-up and was categorical: during nearly two years of the case, he did not meet with the parties, hid evidence, and pursued journalists. Journalist and lawyer Natalia Volosín, who revealed the draft of the US$5 million agreement that Taiano had since November 2025, was even more forceful: «Taiano should be removed as prosecutor and reported for cover-up.» Her testimony was eventually suspended.

In April, eight national deputies—including Maximiliano Ferraro—reported him for alleged misconduct, citing unjustified delays, withholding of evidence, and diversion of the investigation. Added to this is a conflict of interest that cannot be ignored: his son Federico Taiano holds a position in Milei’s Cabinet Chief’s Office, in the Unit of Seized Assets.

While the case languishes amid endless expert reports and case files that never conclude, the small and medium-sized enterprises that trusted the project continue to count their losses. For them, those US$110 million are not an abstract figure: they are working capital, salaries, investments, and projects that will never return. And while they wait for a response from the state, an opaque trust protects money whose fate remains a mystery.

The $LIBRA case no longer needs technical excuses or months wasted. It needs an investigation capable of chasing the money with the same speed with which the money fled. Because in financial crimes, time is never neutral. Every passing day favors those who hide the funds. Every delay makes it harder to recover them. And when a prosecutor lets time work for the suspects, the clock stops measuring hours. It starts measuring impunity.