Manuel Adorni is a public accountant. He clarified it himself, with some pride, on more than one occasion since he became presidential spokesperson in December 2023. This condition makes it more difficult to sustain the explanation he offered before José del Río on LN+: that the sworn statements he presented in the State contained errors because he prepared them himself, in a hurry, copying data from his own previous records, and that he “carried that error” for more than two years. A CPA who does his own tax returns without adding half a million dollars in assets is not distracted. He is, at best, someone who made a decision. The documents that are now in the hands of Justice tell a story that Adorni failed to tell coherently at any time.
What he declared when he wanted to be a deputy
On March 29, 2025, Adorni presented his sworn declaration of assets to the Electoral Court of the City of Buenos Aires as a candidate for Buenos Aires legislator for La Libertad Avanza. In that document, the then Chief of Staff declared that he owned two properties: an apartment in the Federal Capital at 50% and another apartment in La Plata at 100%. In cash in Argentina: USD 42,500 and $1,950,000. In bank account abroad: USD 6,220.23. Nothing else. No cryptocurrency. No savings in bitcoin. No country in Exaltación de la Cruz. None of the USD 500,000 that, according to what he himself admitted before the LN+ cameras, he already owned at that time.
The criminal complaint presented before the City Justice by lawyers José Lucas Magioncalda, Rodrigo López Guerra and Ximena De Tezanos Pinto is forceful on this point: “It is clear that there are at least USD 500,000 that are not part of the electoral affidavit corresponding to 2025.” And the conduct falls within article 293 of the Penal Code, which punishes anyone who “inserts or causes false statements to be inserted in a public instrument” with imprisonment or imprisonment of one to six years. The fraud, the complainants argue, “is proven by the simple fact of signing the document knowing that the real data were different, and even more so in the case of the accused who has the status of public accountant.”
The patrimonial jump that does not close
The sworn statements presented to the Anti-Corruption Office—that of the 2024 period in its second corrective version and that of the original 2025 period—make it possible to reconstruct a patrimonial evolution that the Prosecutor’s Office has already put under the magnifying glass.
At the beginning of the 2024 period, Adorni declared assets of $515,479,434. At the end of that same period, that figure rose to $662,646,891. And in the 2025 declaration—the one he presented a few hours before sitting down with Del Río—the assets at the end of the period amounted to $944,575,052, with debts of $317,312,719. In the rectified 2024 declaration, what was absent in the electoral version appears for the first time: $513,000 in cash recorded as “sale of assets”, plus cryptocurrencies in Binance, Lemon and BTC.
According to the tax presentation, Adorni’s assets would have grown by 500% in a single fiscal period, which raised suspicions about the origin of the funds. That number is the heart of the case for illicit enrichment that is being processed before Judge Ariel Lijo, at the urging of prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita. And now the 2025 electoral declaration adds another dimension to the file: it is not only about explaining how the assets grew, but also determining why a significant part of that assets was not declared when Adorni appeared before the Buenos Aires voters asking for their trust.
The history of bitcoin that changes depending on the day
Adorni explained the origin of the undeclared USD 500,000 with a sequence that varied as the questions progressed. First he said that he and his wife had saved money “like all Argentines.” He then specified that this savings came from investments in cryptocurrencies made between 2013 and 2018. He then added that the seed of that investment – about an initial USD 200,000 – came from money he found after the death of his father in 2002. With those USD 200,000 invested in bitcoin between 2014 and 2018, he would have earned another USD 300,000. Total: half a million dollars that existed but was not declared.
Prosecutor Pollicita requested urgent access to the sworn statement corresponding to 2025 and to all the rectifications made by Adorni, with the aim of contrasting that information with the asset cross-checks carried out by the Public Prosecutor’s Office together with the Directorate of Judicial Assistance in Complex Crimes and Organized Crime. The prosecution also seeks to reconstruct the economic capacity that Adorni had at the time he claims to have made investments in cryptocurrencies, to verify whether the income declared in those years was compatible with the amounts invested.
This verification is the most delicate point for the defense. Because if in 2013 and 2014 Adorni was a media economist with income compatible with his activity, the question that Justice will try to answer is how he had USD 200,000 in cash to invest in bitcoin at a time when the crypto market was practically unknown to the general public. And why that money was not declared anywhere either.
The cause that doesn’t stop
Judge Ariel Lijo, at the request of prosecutor Pollicita, ordered the lifting of the banking and tax secrecy of Adorni, his wife Bettina Angeletti and the company AS Innovación Profesional, which they own. The measure allows unrestricted access to bank accounts, financial movements, investments and tax returns, focusing on the period beginning January 1, 2022.
Added to this is that the case could add a new accusation of malicious omission, a figure that points to the eventual concealment of information that should be declared, regardless of whether the origin of the funds is legal or not. That is to say: even if Adorni managed to prove that the money was of legitimate origin, he would still have to answer for not having declared it when he was obliged to do so.
Adherence to the Fiscal Innocence law—promoted by the government itself and celebrated by Adorni himself as “one of the laws that will remain in the great history of our country”—does not protect him from the criminal case. What it does is shield it fiscally from the treasury, not from the judge investigating illicit enrichment.
What he knew and what he said
On May 7, Milei came out to support his Chief of Staff with the phrase that has been repeated for months: “Another atomic nonsense from the filthy garbage called journalists.” Thirty-five days after that endorsement, Adorni acknowledged before the cameras that the things that journalism had been denouncing were substantially true. Which he had not declared. That I had saved in black. That he made “a mistake.” Who thought about resigning.
The public accountant who prepared his own sworn statements and “carried out the error” for more than two years now has the prosecutor Pollicita reviewing each number, the judge Lijo with access to his bank accounts since 2022 and a criminal complaint in the Buenos Aires Justice for ideological falsehood in a public electoral instrument. Milei continues holding him. But Justice does not wait.
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