Giselle Leclercq: Milei and Laje's incredible connections with the crypto business, prior to the $Libra scandal

The journalist of the magazine Noticias, Giselle Leclercq , pointed out the links between the president Javier Milei and the CEO of the company Cube Exchange , Bartosz Lipiński , a new character in the plot. In dialogue with Modo Fontevecchia , on Net TV , Radio Perfil (AM 1190) and Speaking on Radio JAI (FM 96.3), Leclercq said that Lipiński had signed a “pre-agreement” with the Argentine president and assured that there is “a permanent effort to try to erase the digital footprint ” of those involved in the scandal.

Giselle Leclercq holds a degree in Social Communication from the University of La Plata, with a postgraduate degree in Research from the University of Salvador. Since 2015 she has worked as a journalist for the magazine Noticias.

Cube Exchange, the company that would have signed the $Libra contract with Milei

Alejandro Gomel: You are following the case very closely. What are the latest developments?

We are facing a case that will bring us something new every day. Yesterday, we published in PERFIL a note about some new characters surrounding the $Libra scandal, about a company called Cube Exchange.

AG : What is Cube Exchange?

Since this blew up with Javier Milei's first tweet, we started to get to know characters that until recently were unknown to us. One of them is Hayden Davis , the young man behind $Libra. A few days ago, an interview that his brother, Gideon Davis , had given to an American YouTuber in November went viral on social media.

He gave this interview in November and talked about the project, how he and his brother were moving forward in their company and their great ambitions and their big dreams. There he said that the president Javier Milei had signed an LOI, a letter of intent, with the company Cube Exchange , which they had facilitated.

From that fragment, all the journalists who have been following the case were put on alert and began to try to find out what Cube Exchange was and what this pre-agreement was about. Journalists such as Hugo Alconada Mon or Alejandro Bercovich had been talking about the existence of a signed pre-agreement. The fragment of the interview was so revealing because Heiden's brother said that there was a signed paper.

The most striking thing is that this interview had been removed from the YouTube channel where it had been uploaded. We started to investigate and it was quite easy to find that, indeed, this company, dedicated to blockchain and the entire crypto world, had been present in Argentina long before we learned of this scandal.

The CEO of this company is a man named Bartosz Lipiński . Some say he is Polish, others say he is American, but the truth is that it is quite easy to find on the Internet that they were working in Argentina. Only from the archive on the web can you see that Lipiński was at the famous Tech Forum that was held in November.

For those who are not aware of all the details, the Tech Forum was an event where Javier Milei spoke and where all the characters who are currently in this soap opera were present, from Mauricio Novelli to Manuel Terrones Godoy , who would be the people who would have put Javier Milei with characters from this world. Julian Peh was also there, who is the businessman from Singapore who is in another company involved in this scandal, called Kip Protocol .

In October, before the Tech Forum, the social media of this company, Cube Exchange, made a big announcement, without further details, about what the details of the work they were doing were, with a video that said: "Your Power, your Money. Cube x Javier Milei", and there were images of the company logo with fragments of Milei in the campaign, with an Argentine flag waving.

A month earlier, in September, Cube Exchange organized an afterparty with Travis Scott here in Puerto Madero. That news was picked up by all the media, because suddenly a rapper of Travis Scott's level was in Buenos Aires and they were number one figures in the music industry in Argentina. The event was held to publicize the company, but not only that. A while before, Lipinski was also at the Casa Rosada, and his entry was authorized by Karina Milei . This businessman entered the Casa Rosada with Mauricio, Manuel Terrones and Hayden Davis.

It is useful to understand this in order to begin to sort out who the actors are in this plot that we are still trying to understand. If one goes back a little in time, to June, one can see that Cube Exchange already had a link with very important people in Argentina, because it appears as a sponsor of one of the videos of Agustín Laje, the Government's favourite political scientist. In one of his videos, Agustín said that with his friends at Cube Exchange they were raffling off dollars for followers. These are small signs, or not so small, that Cube Exchange had a link with Argentina and with important people in Javier Milei's government.

Elizabeth Peger : And what was the letter of intent or this pre-agreement that Cube Exchange supposedly had with President Milei about?

That's the big mystery. I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't want to get their hands on this agreement. There are a lot of hypotheses about it. As far as we know, it was a "letter of intent", a first pre-agreement to start working. When Hayden Davis's brother talks about it, he talks about a very ambitious project that combines blockchain with the financial system and international trade , but it's not entirely clear what the work of this company is going to be.

EP : The prosecutor in charge of the case, Eduardo Taiano, ordered the seizure of the cell phones of President Javier Milei, the Secretary General of the Presidency, Karina Milei, and the spokesman Manuel Adorni. What could this decision imply?

I think that all measures are positive as long as the investigation progresses. There is something that is very striking, and that all of us who have been involved in the case since day one are seeing with astonishment, and that is that there is a permanent effort to try to erase the digital footprint of all these characters . For example, the Haydens took down their social networks and the first video of this interview with Hayden's brother had been taken down from the internet, and now it has been uploaded again to YouTube.

I think that any measure that tries to prove what these relations were like is positive, because, despite the efforts to eliminate all the links, they are still there. It is not that we are doing a deep investigation, we are making an archive on the Internet and the links are there. Just by doing advanced searches on Google, one can notice that there is a sustained work over time, directly linked to, at least, officials of the Casa Rosada. One must be cautious with how it is presented, but there are some things that seem evident. They all went to the Casa Rosada, then they all went to the Forum, made announcements on behalf of the president of Argentina, gave interviews and spoke of signed agreements.

AG : That is to say, if there is a decision to move forward, there is where to look for material and where to investigate. It is not that complicated, the decision has to be there.

We already know how this is, but I would think so, especially because of the fluidity of the links. Let us remember that some of the people I mentioned have been dealing with President Javier Milei for years, such as Mauricio Novelli, who had a training institute where Milei taught classes. If there is an intention to investigate, I think it will not be so difficult to be able to explain well what these links are about. Later, justice will say if there was a scam or what happened. Now, at least we can reconstruct this map of relationships that go far beyond Argentina, because we are talking about Lipinski, the Haydens or Julian Peh, who distanced himself with a statement from his company Kip Protocol.

AG : There are those who say that it can be more complicated given what can be investigated in the United States than here in Argentina…

This is something that is repeated in the United States. I was talking to some people there and this is an issue. In an interview, Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein , who was in the United States at the CPAC with Milei, was asked about this matter and he said that no one asked him about it. It is a lie. The media in the United States reflect it and it is reflected by people in the crypto world, because they are all very aware and it is a judicial matter.

One of the latest developments outside Argentina is that a complaint has also been filed in Spain to investigate whether there is any circuit linked to this Libra scandal. Why? Because the Hayden family has been living in Barcelona for many years. This goes far beyond Argentina. We know how justice works in our country, but on this occasion courts from other states are intervening.

Claudio Mardones : Politics is closely following what happens in the FBI and in agencies of the Department of Justice of the United States government. The head of the FBI, who reports to the Department of Justice, is ultimately the occupant of the Oval Office of the White House. Will the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the stock market on Wall Street, or the FBI, move faster? Will there be any judicial developments from the Argentine courts or from other courts?

Honestly, I wouldn't dare to answer that. What we could see is that, at least, Javier Milei was not marginalized by his international allies once this scandal broke. We know that how you position yourself politically can have a certain influence on how these things move forward. I wouldn't dare to say where he can prosper better or not, but what we saw in recent days is that nobody let go of Milei's hand, and at least from Donald Trump and that group of allies that our president has, there seems to be some support.

The head of the unit created to investigate the President in the $LIBRA case was appointed

CM : The FBI is analyzing whether it is a crime, so time is running out. Here, the questions have revolved around federal prosecutor Eduardo Taiano for his delay. Others remember that one of the prosecutor's relatives works as an official in Guillermo Francos' Cabinet. Regarding the Argentine federal justice system, what is your perspective on this case?

It's similar with justice and with the entire political class. We saw what happened in the Senate with that investigative commission, presented by the same senators who later did not vote for it. I dare to think that one of the elements that can pull and generate pressure is that the media continue to investigate. There is a very strong Twitter community that is searching the underworld of the Internet and is bringing more and more material to the public discussion. What one sees is that they did not rush out to investigate what was happening. As long as a certain pressure is generated and things continue to appear, perhaps someone will say: "Let's see what is happening, do we know anything?"

EP : Is there any news about Santiago Caputo's trip to the United States? It was reported that he had traveled to accompany the president at the meetings at CPAC, but it had been reported that Caputo had traveled for a meeting with Hayden.

There are rumors of all kinds. Santiago Caputo was not the only one who traveled. The leader and deputy from Buenos Aires, Agustín Romo , also traveled. What they say in Hayden's entourage, and what Hayden himself said is that he was in contact with people from Milei's team, so it would not be strange for that to happen, but all this is happening in a sea of ​​rumors that are leaking. Let's remember that Hayden left his known address and it seems that he has asked for custody. All this is getting a little dark, so I don't know for sure if Santiago Caputo met with Hayden, but it wouldn't surprise me and it would be in line with what Hayden himself said, who said that he controls Milei and that he was in permanent conversations with people from the Libertad Avanza government.

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