In a scathing Dec. 17 press release posted to X WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange filed a criminal complaint against 30 members of Norway’s Nobel Foundation, including its top leadership, to halt the Foundation’s planned payout of $1.18 million to former Venezuelan lawmaker Maria Corina Machado, who was scandalously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize under false pretenses. Assange argues that granting her the monetary award would be a “serious suspected crime,” constituting a gross misappropriation of funds and facilitating “war crimes and crimes against humanity, and financing of the crime of aggression.” Machado not only supports a U.S. invasion of her country, but has also endorsed the U.S. Trump administration’s huge military buildup in the Caribbean, and supported the imposition of new sanctions and seizure of Venezuela’s oil tankers to strangle the economy.
The 30 Nobel Foundation leaders named by Assange’s complaint were certainly “aware of Machado’s incitement to violence and knew or ought to have known that the disbursement of Nobel monies would contribute to extrajudicial killings of civilians and shipwrecked survivors at sea and are in breach of their obligation to cease disbursements.”
Assange charges that granting the Nobel Peace Prize and the monetary award to warmonger Machado is a gross violation of Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will, which mandates that the prize must go to individuals who, “during the preceding year conferred the greatest benefit to humankind” by doing “the most of the best work for fraternity between nations for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” For the preceding year, Machado has organized for war against her country and throughout the region. As the complaint states, the accused were legally bound “to ensure the fulfillment of the intended purpose of Alfred Nobel’s will … to end wars and war crimes, and not enable them.”
Machado’s role in “inciting the Trump administration to pursue its escalatory path” against Venezuela, including by entering into a conspiracy “to give the U.S. administration access to $1.7 trillion in oil reserves and other natural resources through privatization once [President Nicolás] Maduro is ousted,” hardly constitutes promoting “fraternity between nations.”
In terms of requested action, Assange’s complaint calls for an immediate freeze of the pending $1.18 million and “secure return of the medal.” As for the named suspects, including Nobel Foundation Chair Astrid Soderbergh Widding and Executive Director Hanna Stjarne, they should be investigated for breach of trust, facilitation of war crimes and crimes against humanity and conspiracy. All remaining funds should be frozen, accompanied by a full criminal investigation, “lest the Nobel Peace Prize be permanently converted from an instrument of peace into an instrument of war.”
