WikiLeaks founder said awarding Venezuela’s opposition leader is a ‘gross misappropriation’ of funds and risks facilitating war crimes.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint in Sweden against the Nobel Foundation, challenging the organisation’s decision to award its Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
Assange said this year’s awarding of the prize to Machado represented a “gross misappropriation” of funds and the “facilitation of war crimes” under Swedish law. He added that he was seeking to freeze 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.18m) from being transferred to her as prize money.
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The Nobel Committee awarded Machado the prize in October for promoting democratic rights and fighting to achieve a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.
Assange’s criminal complaint, filed on Wednesday, accuses 30 individuals associated with the Nobel Foundation, including the organisation’s leadership, of misappropriating funds, facilitating war crimes and crimes against humanity, and financing crimes of aggression.
By awarding the prize to Machado, “an instrument of peace” was converted “into an instrument of war”, Assange said in the complaint, accusing Machado of inciting and endorsing the “commission of international crimes” by the United States as it applies military pressure to force Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro to step down.
A contentious selection
Machado’s selection for the prestigious honour was not without controversy after drawing criticism for her vocal support for Israel during its ongoing genocidal war in Gaza, including in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortly after her Nobel win was announced in October.
She has pledged to move Venezuela’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem should she take office.
Machado has also expressed support for US President Donald Trump’s months-long campaign against Venezuela’s Maduro, aligning herself with right-wing hawks in his administration.
Trump officials argue that Maduro has links to criminal drug gangs that pose a direct threat to US national security – despite doubts raised by Washington’s intelligence community – and have threatened to take military action against Venezuela.
Since September, Trump has ordered more than 20 military strikes against alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and off Latin America’s Pacific coast, killing 104 people so far.
A massive deployment of US naval and air forces is also under way in Latin America, as fears grow that Washington could order an invasion of Venezuela to topple Maduro.
Assange said this week that Machado’s backing of Trump’s military campaign “categorically exclude[s]” her from consideration for the prize as it violates the criteria set out in the will of the award’s founder, Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel.
“The complaint shows that Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will explicitly mandates that the peace prize go to the individual who during the preceding year ‘conferred the greatest benefit to humankind’ by doing ‘the most or the best work for fraternity between nations’,” Assange said.
WikiLeaks also argued that there is “real risk” the funds have been or will be “diverted from their charitable purpose to facilitate aggression, crimes against humanity, and war crimes”.
The Peace Prize is awarded by a Norwegian selection committee in Oslo, but Assange argued the Stockholm-based foundation must assume financial responsibility. Swedish police confirmed to the AFP news agency that they had received the complaint.
Assange founded whistleblowing organisation WikiLeaks in 2006 and rose to prominence in 2010 after publishing a series of leaks from US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
In 2012, Assange was granted refuge by Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault that were eventually dropped, staying there for seven years.
He was then jailed in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison from 2019 to 2024, as the US government sought to extradite him over charges he conspired to hack into US military databases to acquire sensitive secret information.
As part of a US Justice Department plea deal, Assange was released from prison in the United Kingdom in 2024 after pleading guilty to a single count of violating espionage laws, before returning to his native Australia.
