LIBRA Probe Corners Binance, Bybit, OKX: Whose Names are Behind the Frozen Wallets?
Argentina’s Federal Judge Marcelo Martínez De Giorgi has frozen dozens of crypto wallets tied to the LIBRA investigation and ordered six worldwide exchanges handy over full shopper recordsdata, together with KYC data, IP logs, and linked financial institution accounts.
Prosecutor Eduardo Taiano requested the measure on July 14, practically 1.5 years after the token’s collapse. He relied on a Federal Police cybercrime report tracing funds from the so-called Team Libra wallets to main buying and selling platforms.
Exchanges Must Hand Over KYC Data in the LIBRA Investigation
The freeze covers accounts at Binance, Bybit, OKX, CoinEx, FixedFloat, and Bitfinex. Each platform should ship account opening recordsdata, IP connection logs, transaction histories, linked financial institution accounts, and inner memos.
Based on stories, no less than 25 accounts have been frozen, although the ruling itself refers to dozens of wallets.
The decide held that each the plausibility of the declare and the hazard of delay have been established. Therefore, the accounts will keep frozen to protect property for a possible confiscation earlier than any proceeds will be cashed out.
Argentina’s Federal Police cybercrime unit will course of the requests, with Interpol stepping in when wanted. Its report reconstructed an unbroken chain of on-chain transactions from Team Libra wallets by way of Jup.ag, FixedFloat, and deBridge Finance.
The findings construct on fresh LIBRA case evidence gathered earlier from seized telephones. The resolution, as translated, describes a deliberate laundering sample.
“A digital smurfing or structuring technique was deployed, consisting of the each day distribution of fragmented quantities to a number of wallets linked to centralized change homes… with the function of liquidating the property in fiat foreign money or making it tough to hint them.”
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Smurfing Trail Meets Political Friction
On February 14, 2025, President Javier Milei promoted the Solana-based LIBRA token on his X(Twitter) account. The publish has since been deleted.
According to the criticism, the value climbed from $0.01 to just about $5, a roughly 500-fold transfer, earlier than collapsing inside hours.
A small cluster of wallets allegedly withdrew round $100 million in that window. Meanwhile, greater than 40,000 consumers who entered after the presidential publish noticed their holdings collapse, with many struggling steep retail trader losses.
Prosecutors imagine merchants Mauricio Novelli and Manuel Terrones Godoy orchestrated the scheme alongside US businessman Hayden Davis, who created the token.
Earlier leaked recordsdata pointed to an alleged $5 million contract for the presidential promotion, a declare Milei denies.
However, the tracing push arrives as the case’s victim-driven facet collapses. In early July, the identical decide eliminated all 5 investor plaintiffs at Novelli’s protection request, leaving Taiano alone to advance the file.
Opposition lawmakers additionally linked the ruling to the Senate’s approval of the decide’s spouse’s nomination to the federal bench, a nomination Milei submitted.
“With prosecutor Taiano stalling the investigation, if there are no victims to push it ahead, the case will likely be deserted,” Peronist Deputy Selva Almada wrote.
The change responses could now determine whether or not investigators can connect names to the frozen wallets.
LIBRA’s arc mirrors the TRUMP token, the place meme coin retail losses reached $3.81 billion throughout practically 1 million wallets. Whether Argentina can get well its $100 million is the query the KYC recordsdata could lastly reply.
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