Julian Assange files complaint against Nobel Foundation over Machado win

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint in Sweden against the Nobel Foundation after Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the Peace Prize.

This year’s prize represented a “gross misappropriation” of funds and the “facilitation of war crimes” under Swedish law, according to the complaint posted by WikiLeaks on social media.

The Nobel Committee awarded Machado the prize for promoting democratic rights and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Assange cited Machado’s backing of US President Donald Trump’s months-long campaign against Venezuela’s leftist President Nicolas Maduro.

Julian Assange said Machado’s win violated the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, the award’s founder, which stated the prize must go to the person who has done the “most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.

The US-Venezuela spat has seen the massive deployment of US naval and air forces in waters off Latin America, and dozens of small boats allegedly running drugs have been bombed in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing almost 100 people so far.

Assange has also called for the freezing of the 11 million kroner ($1.18 million) in prize money promised to Machado.

According to WikiLeaks, there is “real risk” that the funds have been or will be “diverted from their charitable purpose to facilitate aggression, crimes against humanity, and war crimes”.

While the Peace Prize is awarded by a Norwegian selection committee in Oslo, Assange argued the Stockholm-based foundation must assume financial responsibility.

Swedish police confirmed to AFP that they received the complaint. It was also submitted to the Swedish Economic Crime Authority, which said it did not have the jurisdiction to handle it.

Assange has accused 30 officials linked to the Nobel Foundation of turning “an instrument of peace into an instrument of war”.

Assange was freed from Britain’s Belmarsh Prison in 2024 under a plea bargain after years of incarceration for publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential US government documents.

He was arrested after spending seven years in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault that were eventually dropped.