The name of Mauricio Novelli ceased to be known only in business and technological circles when it appeared linked to the cryptocurrency scandal $ Libra last February. Documents delivered by the Binance firm to Congress pointed out as the holder of a key virtual wallet in the launch of the cryptoactive, with millionaire movements that coincided with political meetings and the organization of forums where he approached power. The sudden closure of that account, just weeks after the controversy exploded, fueled the suspicions. Discreet in public, with links that reached the Casa Rosada and Javier Milei itself, Novelli has since been in the center of a plot where politics, finance and the crypto universe are mixed in the same story. For fraudulent operation, the president is still investigating his sister Karina in local justice and that of the United States.
Next, the investigation dedicated to him news when the scandal broke out.
Vitáik Buterine is a Russian programmer, although he is better known for being one of the founders of Ethereum, the second most important cryptocurrency in the globe. For the world Crypto Buterin is the equivalent of what Lionel Messi is in football: an international celebrity. That is why what happened in December of last year now takes, after the $ Libra scandal, another dimension.
It is that Bugerín requested a audience with Javier Milei, taking advantage of a trip that had planned the country. The first thing that was found was the same response that anyone who seeks to speak with the president receives, be it someone who wants to be a candidate for councilor in a town in Buenos Aires or a billionaire who thinks of investing in the country: he had to convince, first, Karina Milei.
However, there was the first surprise: the general secretary sent him to speak with Mauricio Novelli, a young 29 -year -old trader with a rather doubtful reputation. Returning to the field of football, it was as if Messi requested an encounter with the president and instead sent him to manage that meeting with the substitute for an ascent team. Anyway, Bugerin, probably through some local intermediary, did. And there came the great novelty. Novelli rejected the mythin. The ascent player that told the world celebrity.
With Monday’s newspaper, the scene takes on another meaning. $ Libra was, in those last days of 2024, about to see the light. As the Fluid Encounters of Novelli suggest with Karina Milei in the Casa Rosada -which even arrive until January 30, 14 days before the libertarian promoted the crypto currency in his networks -the relationship between the general secretary and his dolphin was more than fluid.
Will they have feared that $ Libra appeared in the conversation and that Bugerín tried to convince Milei to go back? Did they be afraid that the Russian shouted in the sky and went out to publicly denounce the move? They are questions without answers. What this story demonstrates is that Novelli was Karina’s man in this universe. And this world of cryptobros and virtual currencies is the same that ended with an international scandal with thousands of scammed people and the libertarian in the middle, and who also put the focus between the dark relationship that unites novellli with the Milei.
“You have to meet Mauricio. It’s a love.” The one who speaks is Karina Milei, in a phrase that could be any time in recent years. He referred to Novelli, who had earned his trust by touching his most sensitive organ: putting money directly in his pockets every month. Karina was so delighted with this young businessman that she tried to convince several members of La Libertad Avanza, who orbit around the world of cryptocurrencies or finance, so that, like her brother, they would join N& W Traders classes, the school that Novelli has with her Jeremiah Walsh partner.
The business was simple. Milei promoted the place in her networks and went every so often to give talks for students who paid the fee to train as traders. The libertarian said in the publications that he was going to give “Bitcoin classes” there, which contrasts a lot with what he says now, after the $ Libra scandal. “I don’t understand anything about Bitcoin,” he told Jonatan Viale in his failed interview. How can anyone teach a topic if you don’t “understand anything”?
In any case, the matter worked, to the point that Milei approached N&W traders to the writer Agustín Laje and the influencer Emmanuel Dannan. Novelli gave Karina’s money every month, which always handled the accounts among the brothers. According to two sources of space, they were between two thousand and three thousand dollars per month, in a link that began at the end of 2020. So well that relationship that survived even some complex potholes, such as when Novelli convinced Milei that he promoted a project of his “Vulcano Game”, a cryptocurrency to which the economist sold in his networks as “a sustainable economic diagram in time”. However, it was not sustainable. Like $ Libra, that project quickly went to Pique and left many victims who, trusting in the libertarian’s word, had made money. Milei assured in several interviews that to his recommendations “Cobra”, so there is no reason to think that Vulcan spread without first passing the cap.
When the commercial bond between Milei and Novelli ended, at least the formal -if this admission can be called that, since as it appears in the affidavit of the then libertarian, his only official income was his salary in Congress, which he also donated -is very doubtful. It is that Milei continued to have highlighted on her Instagram profile that she was a N&W traders professor even after she had assumed as president. Novelli will have continued paying the libertarian even after arriving at Casa Rosada? If so, that would be a crime.
However, it might not be the only one. An investigation by the prestigious The New York Times – who even reached his lid – revealed four cases in which Novelli would have asked for a millionaire sum to access an encounter with the president. Rather, that I would have asked for an additional sum. It is that these denounced episodes would have occurred during the “Tech Forum”, an event in October in which Milei gave a speech and is central in this story.
That forum was organized by Novelli and his partner Manuel Terrones Godoy, who at that time had such a low reputation in the crypto world that several in the networks, barely met him, had nicknamed the “Ponzipalooza” -among them the influencer Javier Smaldone, one of those who discovered the scam of Leonardo Cositorto-. In that event, as was registered in the Visits Registry, Novelli met with Milei, the spokesman Manuel Adorni and the Singapurense Julian Peh. This one of the $ Libra creators met the libertarian that day.
Novelli and Terrones Godoy raised thousands of dollars in the “Techforum”. That money made it selling “sponsors” to brands or businessmen, in payments that went from five thousand to fifty thousand dollars, a tariff that can be seen in an image that accompanies this note.
One of those who put money and who, he says, would have promised him for that reason with the president was Charles Hoskinson, a mega -business of cryptocurrencies that created one of the largest platforms in the sector, Cardano, and who also declared in public to be a great admirer of Milei. But, Hoskinson said, that promised meeting – and paid – became a brief group photo, an image that illustrates this note. For a hand to hand with the libertarian, he assured, they asked him even more money. “They told us: ‘Hey, you know, give us a little of something and we can get you a meeting,” said the businessman. “Another assistant said that Novelli offered a meeting with the president if the person signed a contract of $ 500,000 for lazy” consulting services “, says The New York Times, which claims to have seen a copy of that document.
If this were true, enable several questions. One is how much money will have been requested for a meeting. However, there is another more important: do you have to think that it was a trick of the young trader of which the Milei knew nothing? There are several elements to consider not.
The first is the saga of meetings between the Milei and Novelli. Taking into account that there were meetings in the previous event – in June, July, August and September, in the Casa Rosada with Karina – and that the formal society of Techforum was created only one month before the act – whose only relevant figure was the president – would have to assume that at least the general secretary was aware of what was going to happen there.
