Argentine justice investigates Milei’s chief of staff for illicit enrichment

Buenos Aires.- The Argentine Justice ordered evidentiary measures regarding the Chief of Staff of President Javier Milei, Manuel Adorni, who was denounced for crimes of illicit enrichment, embezzlement of public funds, bribery, and influence peddling.

The prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita requested on Friday evidence measures regarding the assets of Adorni, former presidential spokesman, based on inconsistencies between his declaration of assets and the properties attributed to him, as well as a level of daily expenses much higher than his income. The investigation belongs to the federal court of Ariel Lijo, a magistrate who, during 2025, was nominated by Milei’s Executive branch to join the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice, but who did not obtain the necessary endorsements in Congress. In his latest sworn statement, corresponding to 2024, Adorni reported that he had two properties: an apartment in the Argentine capital, shared with his wife, and another in La Plata, his hometown, acquired through a family donation. In recent days, several opposition deputies reported the head of the Cabinet to the Justice Department, considered one of the president’s right-hand men, for not having declared two other properties, located in residential areas on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Adorni began to be at the center of the public debate after his wife, Bettina Angeletti, traveled in early March on the presidential plane to New York, along with the official delegation that participated in an event to promote the country for investors.

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After that trip, Adorni himself acknowledged that his wife should not have accompanied him. Furthermore, the viralization on social media of a family trip by Adorni on a private plane during last February is the focus of journalistic coverage by local media because it would have been financed by Marcelo Grandio, a friend of the official who, since Milei’s assumption in the Executive, received contracts with the Argentine Public Television, an area in charge of the Chief of Staff. Adorni faced journalists this Wednesday in a press conference when asked about the issue: “You are not a judge, you are a journalist. I do what I want with my money, legitimately earned,” he replied visibly irritated and before leaving the room. “I don’t have to explain a private transaction. If the Justice Department asks me, I will present the corresponding documentation,” he added.

And regarding the origin of his real estate, the senior official detailed: “I worked 25 years in the private sector, I built my assets there, before entering the State. I have nothing to hide”.

But journalists reminded him that there are inconsistencies in his sworn statement as a public official, to which he commented: “Everything is correctly declared. The rest is conjecture.” In Wednesday’s press conference, the Chief of Staff went so far as to demand that another reporter apologize for having written a message on the social network X mentioning that he was running out of support in the Government. “My support, intact. Beyond the operations of journalism and old politics, I know who you are and your integrity,” wrote the Secretary General of the Presidency and sister of the president, Karina Milei, after the press conference on X.