The Central Bank of Argentina has not issued new 1000-peso currency notes so far with the photo of Lionel Messi - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
January 5, 2023
A photo is being shared on social media claiming that Argentina’s Government has released new 1000-peso commemorative notes featuring Lionel Messi’s picture and his signature after the FIFA World Cup 2022 victory. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Argentina’s Government released new 1000-peso commemorative notes featuring Lionel Messi’s picture and his signature.
Fact: The image shared in the post is a morphed one. As on date, the Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) did not release any new 1000-peso commemorative notes featuring Lionel Messi’s picture and his signature. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched to check whether Argentina’s Central Bank (BCRA) has issued new 1000-peso commemorative notes featuring Lionel Messi’s picture and his signature, we could not find any such information on the official website of BCRA.  The BCRA website still displays the 1000-peso currency note featuring Rufous Hornero, the national bird of Argentina.
Lately, a few news websites reported that Argentina’s government is considering putting Lionel Messi on banknotes after Argentina’s World Cup victory. These news websites published articles referring to an article published by the ‘El Financiero’ news website.
Informing about BCRA issuing commemorative coins when Argentina won its first World Cup in 1978, ‘El Financiero’ reported that Argentina’s government is analysing options to commemorate their players for the 2022 FIFA World Cup win, and said capturing Lionel Messi’s face on the thousand-peso bill will be the most preferred option as it is important for officials that the figure begins with a ’10’. But in the following line, ‘El Financiero’ article stated, “And before you think otherwise, this option was ‘jokingly’ proposed by members of the Argentine Central Bank, although the most enthusiastic directors, such as Lisandro Cleri, a fervent supporter of Boca Juniors, and Eduardo Hecker, a follower of Independiente, agreed on that a banknote with this design would awaken the collecting spirit of Argentines.” Responding to fact-checking organization ‘Chequeado’, a BCRA official said, “there is no information about this supposed $ 1000 bill in tribute to Messi.”
To sum it up, the Central Bank of Argentina did not issue new 1000-peso currency notes featuring Lionel Messi’s picture.