A possible leak ahead of the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was “highly likely” due to espionage, the Nobel Institute told Norwegian media on Saturday.

On the prediction market platform Polymarket, the odds of Machado winning surged from 3.75 per cent to nearly 73 per cent overnight from Thursday to Friday, just hours before the official announcement in Oslo, AFP reported.

Notably, no experts or media outlets had listed her among the leading contenders for the prize prior to the reveal.

“Highly likely it's espionage,” the director of the Nobel Institute and secretary of the Nobel committee, Kristian Berg Harpviken, told Norway's TV2 television.

On Friday, the head of the Nobel committee said he didn't believe Machado's name

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