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.
History
“You have to meet Mauricio. It is 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.
It is not the only indication in that regard. As this media already said – on a lid entitled “The dirty silver of the Milei”, an investigation that was input for two complaints against Karina Milei, one from part of deputies of Peronism and another of legislators of the Civic Coalition – to profit from the figure of the libertarian that is the historical modus operandi of the Secretary General. Tarking the meetings with him, be it to entrepreneurs or artists like Juan Carlos Pallarols, and being on the sale of candidacies, is part of what the minor of the family has been doing since the libertarian got into politics. If Novelli, indeed, did the same leave only one of two options: or saw the method and copied it, or the story was repeated again.
There is another matter that talks about the role of Karina in all this. It is that the event was held at the Libertador Hotel. It is the same place where he worked five years as manager Roxana Cozzo, just before accepting Milei’s sister’s convaiting and becoming her assistant in the general secretary. All roads lead to Karina. Novelli, on the other hand, denied these accusations through a statement that took the New York Times the note published. “I emphatically have charged money to facilitate meetings with government authorities,” he said.
Near
Not only in “Tech Forum” the relationship between Novelli and Los Milei was evidenced. It is that since the brothers came to power, the trader had open doors of the Casa Rosada – there are nine visits there, authorized by the General Secretariat – and three to the fifth of Olivos.
In one of those meetings, on January 30 at the Government House, Novelli organized a meeting between Milei and Hayden Davis, one of the creators of $ Libra, present in the first row of the “Techforum”. That is: it was Novelli who introduced Julian Peh and Davis to Milei. In fact, Peh assures in The New York Times that it was Novelli who dragged him to the matter, implying that he did it through a hoax and then wanted to blame him for the disaster, since he convinced him, in the dramatic hours of February 14, to go out to say that the currency “was a success” in the networks. This is far from being a detail: the official government statement, the day after the scandal broke out, pointed out that it had been Peh who brought Davis to Milei. One of the two parts lies.
Consulted for this note, Novelli – through a consultant, who curiously also works with the advisor Santiago Caputo – did not provide more information about the link with the Milei or why he visited the Rosada or Olivos house so frequently.
After the scandal exploded for $ Libra, the magnifying glass pose over Novelli. In fact, he revived one of his dark chapters: his past as an employee of Arrayanes Capital S and credits to the river, firms that had a central role in one of the largest scams in Argentine history that was known as a wenance case. His CEO, Alejandro Muszak, continues imprisoned.
It is not the only unknown that is around Novelli. His partner, Terrones Godoy, told his YouTube channel that “Trump was not going to be the only president to launch his token”, since thanks to that “he could have all the fire power to finance his party” and that this was something good, since “he avoided the need for the policy of stealing the state to do politics.” The funny thing is that this said only one month before $ Libra left.
How far was novelli? Why does Milei and her sister, who pass the “guillotine” to any of its most intimate allies, do not touch the trader? What does Novelli know that it is so sinful? For now, they are just questions. Only for now. Justice raided on Friday 7 the offices of Techforum and the house of Novelli. The scandal for $ Libra continues.
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