Nobel Peace Prize committee to investigate bets boom on Maria Corina Machado win

Nobel Peace Prize officials to investigate suspicious betting activity that suggests the peace prize winner was leaked before Friday's, October 10, 2025 announcement.

Online bets for Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado surged dramatically on Polymarket hours before she was named the 2025 laureate.

The betting pattern showed Machado's odds jumping from 3.75% to 72.8% between midnight and 2 a.m of Norwegian local time, just few hours before official declaration.

Nobel Institute director Kristian Berg Harpviken acknowledged: “It seems we have been prey to a criminal actor who wants to earn money on our information.”

“Until the suspicious activity, the widow of former Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya had led the betting markets,” The Guardian reported.

The investigation examines potential breaches in the Nobel committee's famously secret selection process, which has remained leak-free for decades.

In addition to that, one bettor reportedly won over $65,000 on Machado's victory, while another successful wager came from an account created the same day as the bet.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner probe points fingers at an unprecedented challenge to the integrity of the Nobel selection process, which maintains strict confidentiality around its deliberations until the moment of announcement.