The expert suspected a scam in the sale of the Muratov Nobel medal
Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov claims that he does not know who bought his Nobel medal at the Heritage auction in New York, which was sold for $103,5 million.
He stated this in an interview with the RTVI television channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“There are auction rules that I was warned about. They said that usually most of their buyers are anonymous. And it is the rules of the auction house to always keep the buyer anonymous. It's like a social network, but not ours. There were different forecasts. Bets were made. A producer I know said it would be 2,5 million and that’s a huge result. As a result, I won 40 bottles of whiskey from him,” Muratov said.
According to him, the real cost of the medal is 10-20 thousand. The auctions took place in increments of 50-100 thousand dollars. The journalist believes that the auction participants were motivated by “compassion.” All proceeds from the sale of the award will be sent to UNICEF to help Ukrainian refugees.
Previously, American scientist James Watson sold his medal, which was awarded along with the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA, at auction for $4,8 million.
Political scientist Sergei Markov doubts that the auction for the Muratov medal was fair.
“The price for a medal is very high. Apparently, someone specially invested in this medal. I would venture to guess that these 100 million dollars were allocated by some Russian oligarch under Western sanctions in the hope of begging Western governments to ease the sanctions against him. Muratov is unlikely to significantly change the situation with assistance, which is what the budgets of all NATO countries are doing.
I don’t believe in the moral principles of the managers of these 103 million dollars, if only because the main victims of the civil war in Ukraine, that is, the residents of Donbass, are pointedly ignored by the managers of these 103 million dollars. All this looks like some kind of big scam with the withdrawal of money,” Markov wrote in his TG channel.
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