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Swedish Officials Investigating Nobel Prize Board

• 'The Nobel Prize Committee is facing criminal investigation of bribery and corruption after allegedly taking huge payments from a pharmaceutical company that directly benefits from the work of 2008’s Nobel Prize winner in medicine.'

• The allegation was initially reported in the European trade press and absent from Sweden's major daily newspapers.

• According to Swedish trade journal Dagens Medicin, two Nobel-affiliated corporations - Nobel Media and Nobel Webb - are accused of taking 'many millions' of dollars from Swedish-American pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

• Two Swedish academics on the committee have close ties to AstraZeneca – one sits on the company's board of directors, while the other was a former consultant to then pharmaceutical company.

• Part of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Harald zur Hausen, a German scientist who discovered the links between the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and cervical cancer.

• 'The discovery could be a financial bonanza for AstraZeneca, which holds the patents on ingredients in the vaccines used to fight the viruses.'

• AstraZeneca could make millions from Gardasil, made by Merck, as well as GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix, thanks to patents it holds.

• The pharmaceutical giant denies any wrongdoing.