The Nobel Peace Prize has become mired in scandal after suspicious bets were placed before a longshot was announced as the winner.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was an obscure candidate just 12 hours before she took home the award on Friday.
Her victory stunned the world after Donald Trump secured a peace deal in Gaza, ending a two-year war that has killed more than 70,000 people.
Machado had just a 5 percent chance of claiming victory, according to prediction market Polymarket.
But then a buying spree, from a newly created account ‘6741’, rocketed her chances to 70 percent. That trader made more than $50,000 in profit.
Another, ‘GayPride,’ also got in on the action, placing a series of bets after Machado’s chances had shot up and earned more than $85,000, Polymarket data shows.
A third, ‘dirtycup’, wagered around $70,000 just hours before the prize was announced, earning $30,000.
‘We take this very seriously,’ Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told Bloomberg. ‘It seems we have been prey to a criminal actor who wants to earn money on our information.’
Donald Trump returns to the White House following a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday
Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Jorgen Watne Frydnes addresses journalists to announce the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Friday
Polymarket did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The prediction market does not prohibit insider trading. The offshore, unregulated marketplace is officially off-limits to Americans and is therefore not subject to the laws which ban stock market tipoffs.
Regulated US platforms such as Kalshi prohibit insider trading, as do sports betting websites.
Harpviken said he is not aware of any similar controversy surrounding the peace prize, although there had been ‘some leaks’ around 15 years ago.
‘We will look closely at this to find out what has happened,’ he told Bloomberg. ‘Secrecy for us is very important.’
Trump earlier called Machado to congratulate her on winning the prize – after she dedicated her victory to the US President and her country’s democracy movement.
The President’s reaction may come as a surprise to critics given speculation he would be furious at not receiving the prize himself.
Many had tipped Trump as a contender for brokering the historic peace deal between Israel and Hamas.
Maria Corina Machado at a campaign rally in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, last July
But the notoriously woke committee in Oslo rejected Trump for falling short on their standards of ‘courage and integrity.’
‘We base our decision only on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel,’ Nobel chairman Jorgen Watne Frydnes said.
Instead they announced Machado the winner on Friday morning for her fight for freedom against the Communist tyrant Nicolas Maduro.
Trump’s magnanimous reaction followed the Venezuelan leader’s thanks to Trump for his ‘decisive support’.
‘I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump,’ she wrote on X.
‘We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy,’ she added.
