The fortune of the Nobel Foundation, which funds the annual prizes, is managed with no regard to ethical principles and could be partly invested in arms companies, a Norwegian non-government organisation said Sunday.
The NorWatch NGO denounced a lack of transparency around the foundation, which confines itself to identifying its fund managers without going into further detail.
Norwatch said some of the places where Nobel money is invested are involved in the arms trade.
Aake Alteus, financial director of the Nobel Foundation in Sweden, told Norwatch that the foundation discusses these questions with its investment partners in order to ensure than money is placed in shares that are not incompatible with the foundation's aims.
The prizes are funded out of the money left by the dynamite king Alfred Nobel, who sought to give recognition each year to those considered to have rendered the greatest services to humanity. The peace, literature, economy, medicine, physics and chemistry prizes each carry about 10 million Norwegian kroner (one million euros, 1.17 million dollars) in prize money.
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