Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov sold his Nobel Peace Prize medal for $ 103.5 million to help Ukraine

Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov auctioned the Nobel Peace Prize medal he won in 2021 in New York this Monday and grossed $ 103.5 milliona figure that will go to UNICEF to provide help Ukrainian children displaced by the armed conflict with their country.

Muratov is the head of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which has announced its closure until the end of the war between Russia and Ukraine due to the warnings received following strong criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The tender lasted about 20 minutes and was conducted by the Heritage house, which waived the charges so that the amount could be entirely donated to the cause. During that time, the price went from $ 787,000 to $ 15 million. After, an anonymous buyer reported by phone that he was paying $ 103.5 million.

This is not the first time that a Nobel medal, of which it is composed 175 grams of 23 karat gold. However, a figure of this magnitude has never been reached. Without going further, the record belonged to one that was sold in 2014 for $ 4.76 million.

Muratov, who made headlines in early April after being sprayed with red paint as a train was on its way to Moscow, was greeted by the Heritage auction house like a rock star. The shouts of the audience, the glasses of champagne, the music of a piano and the flashes of the cameras gave color to the impressive event.

Far from contributing to that festive mood, the 60-year-old publisher took it upon himself to put an end to it all. “This is not a party“, he warned. And he expressed his intention to speak of” human solidarity and the difficulties of the world “.

Before starting the race, he took the podium and recalled that of the 16 million Ukrainian refugees, 40 percent are children, while two thirds of Ukrainian children have had to leave their homes.

In this sense he gave as an example a Ukrainian boy who was found in Russia and who asked him for money “to be able to top up the phone to call his mother in Ukraine”. Then, he asked the spectators to put themselves in his place for a moment.

“They killed their past and now they want to destroy their future,” he stressed. Finally, she noted that she hopes her gesture will serve as an inspiration for other people to follow her own path.

Other Nobel medals that have been sold

Chief wealth strategist Joshua Benesh praised the generosity of Muratov’s gesture, telling the news agency EFE That It is not the first time that a Nobel laureate has auctioned his medal.

One of the first to do this was the Danish scientist Niels Bohrwinner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. He did so in 1940, in the midst of World War II, to donate the proceeds to Finnish Aid, an organization that also helped refugees from that war.

There were other sales as well, albeit not for altruistic purposes. In 2015 the Nobel Prize in Physics leon lederman he sold what he had won in 1988 for $ 633,000 to pay for medical bills in the United States, after starting to have problems with memory loss.

Until Muratov’s auction, it belonged to the highest auction price for a Nobel medal Giacomo Watson, discoverer of DNA. He had decided to sell it due to his financial difficulties. The buyer, one of the Russian billionaire men, paid $ 4.7 million and, as if that were not enough, he returned the medal to Watson.

With information from AFP.