The Mining Elite in Its Final Act: The Collapse of the Opacity Model and the Emergence of a New Financial Architecture for Argentine Mining

For decades, Argentine mining has been hijacked by a corporate core that has perpetuated itself in power under the guise of an “entrepreneurial” institutional framework, which has only served to guarantee extraordinary profits at the expense of the sovereign resources of the Argentine people.

The Argentine Chamber of Mining Entrepreneurs (CAEM), led by Roberto Cacciola and with Alejandra Cardona as executive director, far from representing the interests of sustainable, inclusive, and transparent development, has become the main cog in an architecture of impunity based on under-invoicing, tax evasion, and the systematic blocking of any innovation promoting transparency and redistribution of the value generated by our natural resources.

Today, CAEM is unmasked for what it truly is: the expression of a mining elite that has obstructed the structural transformation demanded by the 21st century. At stake is not just a technical debate about investment models, but the future of the country’s economic sovereignty. CAEM’s resistance to the tokenization of mining assets, promoted with clarity, regulatory robustness, and geoeconomic vision by the Latin American Lithium Chamber, represents a desperate attempt to preserve an exhausted model: closed, elitist, opaque, and profoundly unjust.

The ongoing criminal case 3309/23 in Federal Court starkly reveals the true extent of the damage: systematic under-invoicing of lithium carbonate prices, exports declared at values far below international prices, and triangulated structures that enabled the largest asset drainage in Argentina’s recent lithium history. This operation was not the result of chance or isolated mismanagement. It was enabled, tolerated, and legitimized by the power structure represented by CAEM.

But the severity does not end there. Added to this harmful practice is the media, institutional, and personal persecution of those of us who dare to propose a new paradigm. From the Latin American Lithium Chamber, together with partners, technical teams, and national and international entities, we have proposed a model based on the tokenization of real assets, supported by traceability, blockchain technology, regulatory compliance with the National Securities Commission (CNV), and a decentralized financing architecture (regulated crowdfunding) that allows small and medium-sized investors to connect with real opportunities in Argentina’s subsoil. In response to this proposal, which is already being implemented with a concrete legal and technological foundation, CAEM’s only reaction has been obstruction, disinformation, and destructive lobbying.

The recent statement issued by CAEM—claiming that tokenization has no utility—constitutes an unacceptable overreach into matters beyond its competence. Issuing judgments on financial instruments registered and supervised by regulatory bodies like the CNV is, at the very least, a functional overstep. But above all, it is an admission of guilt: tokenization dismantles the privileges of intermediaries who have historically captured extraordinary rents without generating added value for the nation.

It is no coincidence that behind this machinery are actors like geologist Favio Casarín and Dr. Andrea Polizzotto, both removed by direct decision of the president of the Latin American Lithium Chamber upon verifying their ethical and institutional incompatibility with the organization’s goals. Their ties to ongoing criminal cases and their public interventions, laden with slander and falsehoods, respond to a strategy of internal sabotage orchestrated by interests that now see their businesses threatened.

Most alarmingly, a supposedly “entrepreneurial” chamber like CAEM is composed and led by salaried employees lacking productive legitimacy or technical representation, who presume to speak on behalf of the entire industry. They are not producers. They are not innovators. They do not represent the future. They are the administrators of plunder, and the country can no longer tolerate it.

Argentina needs a profound economic reengineering of the mining model. A system where asset access is traceable, contracts are on blockchain, tokens represent certified real rights, and investment ceases to be a privilege of concentrated funds, opening up to citizens, the global market, and future generations. A system where transparency is not a promise but a daily practice backed by code, law, and digital oversight.

This is the path we have begun to walk from Atómico 3 and the Latin American Lithium Chamber. This is the future: a future that does not ask for permission, that does not kneel before unproductive fairs or colonial discourses disguised as “progress.” Argentine lithium cannot continue to be sold as if it were table salt. It is time to declare it a strategic commodity, with a real and recorded value, and for the State to assume its role as guarantor and protector of national interests.

And those who for decades benefited from disorder, opacity, and lack of controls will have to answer, before the courts and the Argentine people, for every ton sold at a pittance. History will judge them. But first, the documented truth, traceability, and the law will.