Swedish police said Friday they would not open an investigation into a criminal complaint filed by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against the Nobel Foundation over the Peace Prize awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
Assange brought the complaint after Machado won this year’s Peace Prize, saying the decision violated the principles of the Nobel, given the opposition leader’s backing of US President Donald Trump’s campaign against Venezuela’s leftist President Nicolas Maduro.
According to the complaint posted by WikiLeaks on social media this week, the prize represented a “gross misappropriation” of funds and the “facilitation of war crimes” under Swedish law.
In an email to AFP, detective inspector Rikard Ekman said the complaint did not contain any information to suggest a crime had been committed.
“As I have decided not to initiate a preliminary investigation, no investigation will be conducted on the basis of the complaint,” Ekman said.
The Norwegian 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 said Machado’s win violated the 1895 will of prize founder Alfred Nobel, which states 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.
While the Peace Prize is awarded by a Norwegian selection committee in Oslo, Assange argued the Stockholm-based foundation must assume financial responsibility.
He called for the freezing of the 11 million kronor ($1.18 million) in prize money promised to Machado.
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.
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