The Norwegian Nobel Institute on Friday confirmed that the name of the winner of the 2025 peace prize had been “illegally” leaked before the announcement, without ruling out that a state actor may have been involved.
On the night of October 9 to 10, the day of the announcement, the odds of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado — who won the prize — winning jumped from 3.75 percent to nearly 73 percent within less than two hours on the betting platform Polymarket.
Yet no experts or media outlets had mentioned Machado among the Nobel favourites, prompting the Nobel Institute to open an internal investigation.
“Given that several actors placed significant money on prediction market websites hours ahead of the announcement, we can say with certainty that there were actors who had been able to illegally acquire information on this year’s decision,” the institute’s spokesman Erik Aasheim told AFP.
“Through our investigations, we have not been able to determine how the information was obtained. Neither have we been able to identify who acquired the information, or whether this was a private or a state actor,” he added.
The institute said it had identified vulnerabilities in its IT system and had implemented fixes.
“It is not unreasonable to consider a state actor,” director of the institute Kristian Berg Harpviken told newspaper Verdens Gang (VG).
Banned from running in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, Machado won the prize “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”, according to the award citation.
The 58-year-old, who had dedicated her prize to Donald Trump, handed her medal to the US president at the White House in mid-January.
The Nobel Committee, which selects the laureate, the day after noted that the prize is inseparable from the winner regardless of who has the medal that comes with the prize.
Add Comment