Brazil & Southern Cone - August 2026

Manuel Adorni, a close ally of President Javier Milei who served as both presidential spokesperson and later as cabinet chief, has stepped down from government after months of pressure due to an illicit enrichment scandal. For months, the national media had been reporting on several suspicious activities such as lavish trips and expensive property purchases that a public official would be unlikely to afford. While Milei defended his ally for months, Adorni finally resigned as cabinet chief in late June, when the scandal became too much to bear.  

The far-right libertarian Milei took pride in being a populist political outsider when running for president in 2023. His frequent criticisms of what he calls the ‘casta’ (the caste) of Argentina’s elites and political establishment were a key feature of his election campaign and have persisted in his rhetoric during his presidency. But with his trusted ally Adorni embroiled in a scandal over allegedly enjoying luxuries typical of the sort of political or business elite Milei has long railed against, the anti-establishment image and anti-corruption calls of the radical populist firebrand and his administration have been undermined.

Adorni served as presidential spokesperson after the Milei government took office in December 2023 and in the role he echoed much of Milei’s tirades against the political ‘caste’. During a cabinet reshuffle in October 2025, Adorni was also appointed to the position of cabinet chief, while retaining his spokesperson role. But on 19 June Adorni was replaced as spokesman by Adrián Osvaldo Ravier, a federal deputy for Milei’s far-right La Libertad Avanza (LLA) party. On 27 June he resigned as cabinet chief and was soon replaced by experienced political operator Diego Santilli, who was appointed as interior minister during the reshuffle last year.

The intense scrutiny on Adorni began in March this year, when photos emerged revealing that his wife Bettina Angeletti had travelled on the presidential jet to New York, even though she is not a government official, to attend the ‘Argentina Week’ investment roadshow. Media attention then focused on expensive holidays taken by Adorni and his family which occurred while he was in office, such as a New Year’s holiday to Aruba in late 2024-early 2025 and another family trip to the high-end beach holiday destination of Punta del Este in Uruguay in February 2026, adding to the suspicions of illicit enrichment.

In April this year, a federal court approved lifting the banking and tax secrecy of Adorni and his wife, allowing investigators to access his financial records. In addition to the trips, authorities have also investigated suspicious real estate transactions, such as the purchase of an apartment last year. A flat in an affluent area of Buenos Aires was sold to Adorni in November 2025 by two retirees named Beatriz Alicia Viegas and Claudia Bibiana Sbabo, for a price of US$230,000, but the sellers agreed to mortgage the sale without involvement from any banks, loaning Adorni around 90% of the total value of the property with no interest.

Amid the rising pressure from the torrent of media attention as well as the judicial investigation into how Adorni could have afforded these trips and properties, he updated his declaration of assets in June and revealed that he could sustain this spending because he had saved money which came from cryptocurrency investments. He said that he and his wife invested US$200,000 in Bitcoin from 2014-2018 and received a profit of US$300,000. Seeking to justify the previously undeclared savings, Adorni argued that squirrelling away undeclared savings was a common practice among Argentines, but he also said that he would pay back any tax he might owe.

However, media reports have described the scale of these crypto investments as highly unusual for someone who is not an expert in dealing with cryptocurrencies. Several news outlets mentioned a video from 2020 in which Adorni said that he did not know much about Bitcoin. Reports in the media also suggest that experienced Argentine cryptocurrency investors are a tight-knit community, but none of them were aware that Adorni had any interest in their sector and was never known to attend the social events and conferences frequented by investors. An investment of US$200,000 in Argentina during the 2010s would also have been considered a large, risky investment for a novice in Bitcoin, which could raise doubt over the credibility of Adorni’s claim that he had gained his personal wealth from cryptocurrency.

Throughout all the months of the pressure piling up, Adorni denied wrongdoing and Milei stood by his loyal ally. In late April, when Adorni appeared before congress to present a report on the government’s achievements, Milei also attended the session to show his support for his then-cabinet chief. However, other prominent conservative politicians were growing increasingly vocal on their concern over the scandal.

In May, the leader in the senate for the ruling LLA, Patricia Bullrich, called for Adorni to be fully transparent about his finances and assets to end the scandal embroiling him and the wider government. Before Adorni’s resignation in June, Argentina’s former president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), who is the leader of centre-right Propuesta Republicana (PRO), even suggested that his party might back a motion of censure if Peronist opposition lawmakers from the Partido Justicialista (PJ) were to file one against Adorni.

The Adorni scandal weighed heavily on the government for months and likely contributed to a decline in Milei’s popularity, with polling firm AtlasIntel’s figures showing a 36.4% approval rating for Milei in March and 35.5% in April this year, although his approval later recovered to 39.9% in May and 39.7% in June. By comparison, Milei’s approval rating had remained above 40% from December 2023-February 2026, most of his term, according to AtlasIntel’s figures.

The June survey by AtlasIntel, conducted from 26-30 June, around the time of Adorni’s resignation, also included questions about the case. When asked how likely it was that Adorni had committed irregularities in relation to his wealth and assets, 63.7% of respondents said it was very likely and 16.9% said it was quite likely. Regarding the possible impacts of the scandal on the Milei administration, 51.5% of survey respondents said that it has posed a serious risk to the government’s credibility, and regarding how the government has handled the case, 68.5% said it was handled poorly or very poorly, with 61.8% of respondents also saying that Milei should have sacked Adorni immediately rather than waiting for a resignation or seeing whether the judicial investigation produced substantial evidence.

With Adorni having resigned from government, he might receive less public attention, unless authorities discover more information that could shine the spotlight again on the former cabinet chief. Milei will likely hope that the public outrage over Adorni’s alleged corruption will not raise the risk of an anti-incumbent swing in Argentina’s 2027 presidential elections, although AtlasIntel’s June poll does not indicate that leading Peronist opposition figures are especially popular either. Among the main potential rivals to Milei in next year’s election is the governor of Buenos Aires province, Axel Kicillof (PJ), whom 38% of AtlasIntel’s survey respondents viewed positively, while 56% held negative opinions about the possible left-wing presidential contender.

New cabinet chief

Media outlets have described Milei’s new cabinet chief, Diego Santilli, as a classic politician who fits the mould of what Milei would describe as a member of ‘the caste’. He is a member of the centre-right Propuesta Republicana (PRO) and an ally of PRO’s leader, former president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), so his appointment suggests that Milei will continue to rely on allies connected to the traditional political establishment. Several ministers in Milei’s cabinet, including Economy Minister Luis Caputo, are former PRO members who have ties to Macri. 

Public concerns

In AtlasIntel’s June poll, survey respondents listed corruption as the main problem that Argentina currently faces, with the issue receiving 48% of votes. The issue has ranked as the top concern for months, with AtlasIntel’s polls showing that corruption received 51% of votes in May, 50% in April, 43% in March, 44% in February, and 42% in January.