Javier Milei: Corruption Scandal, Popular Decline, and Street Stoning Attacks

Scandal of corruption, popularity decline, and street stoning attacks: Javier Milei’s challenging weeks in Argentina. The scene was chaotic and marked the peak of two critical weeks for the Argentine president, Javier Milei. On Wednesday (27/8), Milei had to be hastily removed during a campaign rally in the province of Buenos Aires. Protesters surrounded his convoy and, amid shouts and insults, threw stones and other objects at a vehicle from his campaign caravan. The attack forced the president to cancel the rally and increased tensions ahead of the provincial elections on September 7 and the midterm legislative elections on October 26. For Milei, the elections are crucial. The president needs to increase the number of allied legislators in the Argentine Congress and determine if he has the political capital to seek reelection in two years. It seemed that his party, A Liberdade Avança, would be the favorite for the midterm elections, thanks to inflation control and a stable dollar. But the landscape changed. In a report published on Monday (25/8), the Argentine newspaper La Nación highlighted that the first half of August was the lowest point in Milei’s term in terms of public confidence in his government. The newspaper reported that, according to the Torcuato di Tella University in Buenos Aires, the Government Confidence Index fell in a month from 2.45 to 2.12 points, a 13.6% decrease. The assessment was carried out before August 20, when audio recordings were released linking the president’s sister and secretary, Karina Milei, to a scandal involving an alleged bribery network at the National Disability Agency (Andis). The markets reacted negatively to the incident, according to AFP, with an increase in the country risk index, which assesses the cost of government debt in foreign currency. Here we present a summary of what happened in Argentina in the last two weeks. The leaked audios were secretly recorded last year. In them, a voice attributed to the former Andis director, Diego Spagnuolo, claims that Karina Milei would receive bribes related to the payment of medicines for people with disabilities. After the leak, Spagnuolo was dismissed, and Gregorio Dalbón, the legal representative of former Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015), filed a complaint with the Argentine justice system. ‘Karina takes 3%,’ says the former government employee in one of the recordings, according to AFP. Spagnuolo also legally represented Milei and was a frequent presence at the presidential residence. He also claims to have informed the president about the corruption scheme. The president’s sister has not yet commented on the scandal, although the case has dominated headlines and discussions on social media in Argentina. On the other hand, the president denied the facts shortly before the campaign rally from which he was hastily removed. ‘Everything he says is a lie,’ he declared. ‘We will take him to court and prove that he lied.’ Last Friday (22/8), Federal Judge Sebastián Casanello issued 16 search warrants related to the case. On that occasion, the phones of Spagnuolo and directors of the pharmaceutical company Suizo Argentina, mentioned in the leaked recordings, were seized. Legislative blows and country risk increase The case involving Karina Milei became public after, on August 21, the Lower House of the Argentine Congress overturned the presidential veto of a law declaring a state of emergency in disability care and allocating more funds to the sector. At the same time, the Argentine Senate rejected a series of presidential decrees aimed at reducing the state budget, and approved the increase in values ​​allocated to health and public universities. Argentine political analyst Andrés Malamud summarized on his X account (former Twitter) the government’s legislative history in recent months. ‘Since taking office, the government has faced 34 legislative votes,’ he said. ‘There were 17 until March 2025, and it won 15. There have been 17 since April 2025, and it lost 16. The composition of Congress has not changed, the damage was entirely self-inflicted.’ The parliamentary defeats, combined with the drop in public confidence, led to the country risk rising to 829 basis points, a level not seen since April. Analysts suggest that this level of risk hinders the government’s ability to obtain money in the international markets to pay off debts due next year. All of this poses a challenge to the cutbacks program led by Milei since taking office in December 2023. On the other hand, two surveys conducted by the communication companies La Sastrería and Trespuntozero, published on Thursday (08/28) also by La Nación, show an unprecedented deterioration in the assessment of Milei’s government in the country. The perception of his government dropped eight points in the last six weeks. Milei fell to third place in the political leaders’ ranking, behind the governor of Buenos Aires province, Axel Kicillof, and former president Cristina Kirchner – his two main opponents. One of the surveys analyzed the public perception of the alleged bribes case. 62.5% of respondents believe that the audios reflect serious corruption episodes in the government, while 32.8% consider it a political operation, the position defended by the Argentine government.