John Rees reports on Julian Assange’s new political intervention

Julian Assange, the recently freed WikiLeaks founder, has alleged the 2025 Award to María Corina Machado constitutes misappropriation, and facilitation of War Crimes Under Swedish Law.

Today he filed a criminal complaint in Sweden which accuses thirty individuals associated with the Nobel Foundation, including its leadership, of committing serious suspected crimes, including the crime of gross misappropriation of funds, facilitation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the financing of the crime of aggression.

The complaint notes how the Nobel announcement and ceremony have occurred in what military analysts describe as ‘the largest U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis’, now exceeding 15,000 personnel, including the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford.

The escalation continues as President Trump announced on 10 December, two days after the Nobel ceremony, that US strikes would be ‘starting by land’. The Venezuela strategy is part of what Trump’s Secretary for War, Peter Hegseth, calls a shift toward ‘maximum lethality, not tepid legality’ and ‘going on the offence’.

Against this backdrop, Assange states that ‘Machado has continued to incite the Trump Administration to pursue its escalatory path’, including by entering into a conspiracy to give the US administration access to $1.7 trillion in oil reserves and other natural resources through privatisation once current President Maduro is ousted.

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, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.’

Assange argues that the ‘political decision of the Norwegian selection committee does not suspend the fiduciary duty of Swedish funds administrators.’ Moreover,  any ‘disbursement contradicting this mandate constitutes misappropriation from the endowment.’

The complaint comes as the new film of Assange’s successful fight to free himself from jail and the attempted extradition to the US, The Six Billion Dollar Man, is released in the UK.

The complaint, submitted simultaneously to the Swedish Economic Crime Authority and the Swedish War Crimes Unit , states that the suspects, including Nobel Foundation Chair and Executive Director, converted ‘an instrument of peace into an instrument of war,’ through suspected ‘serious criminality’.

Assange requests that Swedish authorities immediately freeze the pending monetary prize transfer and any remaining related budget and secure return of the medal. He also demands an investigation of Foundation officers and associated entities for breach of trust, facilitation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and conspiracy.

‘This complaint seeks the immediate freezing of all remaining funds and a full criminal investigation lest the Nobel Peace Prize be permanently converted from an instrument of peace into an instrument of war’ Assange concludes.