During the election campaign in Argentina, libertarian economist Javier Milei repeatedly referred to his younger sister Karina as “the boss.” Four months into his presidency, she lives up to her nickname.
As general secretary of the presidency, Karina Milei is not only the guardian of her brother’s agenda and the most trusted of a small group of advisers. She is also his political general, holding the reins of his party and selecting staff for senior positions in government and the legislature.
Karina Milei, a former baker and tarot card reader, only got into politics in 2021, when her brother – then a television commentator and private sector expert – ran for a seat in the House of Commons. She led his successful election campaign.
In an interview for a documentary about her brother that came out last year, one of the few times she spoke publicly, she made the case for the libertarians’ inexperienced and experienced team.
“I know many professionals in many different fields, but do you know what is more important? Our group does this for its ideals more than anything else,” she said. “When the people you surround yourself with are good people, everything goes better.”
But their growing power has raised eyebrows among politicians and business leaders. Earlier this month, her last-minute challenge to a committee appointment in Congress sparked a split in the lower house bloc of her brother’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) movement.
In March, Vice President Victoria Villarruel told a television station that Karina Milei’s “strong character” had at times turned the president into a “poor pig in the middle” in disputes between the two women.
“Karina is as important to the leadership of Argentina as Milei,” said a prominent business leader in Buenos Aires. “I’m not sure if it’s a problem yet, but it’s definitely strange.”
Karina Milei, 52, has been her unmarried brother’s closest confidante since she was a child in a middle-class family in Buenos Aires. Javier Milei, 53, has described her parents as “very toxic” and was estranged from them for more than a decade.
“I won the lottery with Kari. “There is no more wonderful person in the world,” he said in an interview in August.
People who know Karina Milei described her as “super calm” and “someone who doesn’t try to charm you.” But she doesn’t seem shy. In 2016, she appeared on a popular game show with her dog Aaron.
She told the host that she “didn’t.” [done well]” in school, but eventually earned a degree in public relations from UADE, a private university in Buenos Aires, which she graduated in 2001. She then worked at companies ranging from a tire import-export company and an insecticide manufacturer to her own Instagram-based cake business.
She was instrumental in her brother’s entry into media and politics in the 2010s, shaping both his long-term strategy and day-to-day logistics.
For example, when Javier Milei staged an economics-themed theater performance in 2018, “she managed all his speaking engagements, family budget and box office” as well as on-stage appearances, Lilia Lemoine, an LLA lawmaker who worked on the sets, said in December in conversation with the Financial Times.
“Without her, he wouldn’t have become president,” Lemoine added.
Now Karina Milei joins her brother in interviews and public appearances and accompanies him on trips. The presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, reports to her, and Martín Menem, president of the lower house of Congress, is a close ally.
She is one of the president’s three closest advisers – “the people who saw him in his pajamas,” said one person who has known the siblings for years. The others are Santiago Caputo, a political adviser, and Nicolás Posse, head of cabinet.
“Karina is less well connected and less involved in the business [the Argentine establishment]” the person added. “But if there is a disagreement between Karina and Posse, Karina wins.”
Karina Milei’s notoriety has caused some foreign investors to question whether they should pursue a relationship with her. But local business leaders said that doesn’t seem possible; Only a few had met her since her brother took office. “She’s more interested in politics than economics,” one executive said.
While the president focuses on addressing Argentina’s severe economic crisis and communicating with voters on X, Karina Milei is leading the effort to build a national party structure for the LLA.
Founded only in 2021, the movement relied on ad hoc alliances with small provincial parties in the 2023 elections and did not field candidates for congress or governorships in many provinces. As a result, the LLA won less than 15 percent of the seats in the legislature.
The president said winning a larger share in the 2025 midterm elections was crucial to his plan to reform Argentina’s economy.
An LLA official said Karina Milei’s “extreme protectiveness” over her brother’s project had caused tensions within the party. “She doesn’t want to leave anything to fate, which makes her a kind of dictator. If you try to control everything, you end up forcing things on yourself and making enemies.”
After the president signed the appointment in April of Marcela Pagano, a first-term LLA lawmaker, to head a powerful congressional committee on constitutional issues including impeachment, Karina Milei ordered her removal, according to two people familiar with the decision.
The incident prompted the leader of the LLA’s lower house bloc, Oscar Zago, and two others to quit the grouping, reducing it to 38 of the chamber’s 257 seats. While the three vowed to support the president’s reforms, which are set to be voted on in Congress this week, “it’s clearly not good to have so much division in a small bloc,” said Ignacio Labaqui, senior analyst at Medley Advisors.
Analysts said Karina Milei also ordered the removal of Ramiro Marra, one of the LLA’s founders, as head of her bloc in the Buenos Aires city parliament last month. But Marra returned to the role last week.
Karina Milei did not respond to a request from the FT for comment on the removal of Marra and Pagano.
“She has overstretched her influence a little,” said Sergio Berensztein, a political consultant. He added that Karina Milei’s interference in Congress had angered some lawmakers who saw it as undermining the independence of Congress.
Berensztein said she would have to “learn quickly” to succeed in the complex task of building lasting alliances in Argentina’s provinces. “You have to talk to people and convince them. It takes a lot. And I think she’s making rookie mistakes.”
It’s a learning curve that she may have expected.
“The truth is that politics is garbage,” she said in last year’s documentary. “When we went into this, we said it wasn’t going to be easy.”