Stockholm: The head of the Nobel Foundation rejected criticism against all-expenses-paid trips that prize jurors made to China and said it was "normal" for them to accept such invitations.

Michael Sohlman, executive director of the foundation that manages the prestigious awards, told The Associated Press he welcomed a bribery investigation into the trips, adding he didn't see anything wrong with the visits.

"When you invite a lecturer it is normal to pay for travel and board," Sohlman said in a phone interview. "The Nobel Foundation cannot finance such trips."

An anti-corruption prosecutor opened a bribery probe last week following a Swedish Radio report that said three jurors from the medicine, chemistry and physics committee were invited to China in 2006 and 2008 to explain the selection process and what it takes to win a Nobel Prize. Chinese authorities paid for their plane tickets, hotels and meals, the report said.

"It happens very often that someone who is linked to the Nobels goes abroad and then they are often asked to talk about the system of awarding the Nobel Prize," Sohlman said.

The 10 million kronor (USD 1.2 million) Nobel awards are handed out annually in six disciplines: medicine, chemistry, physics, literature, economics and peace. Each award has its own prize committee.

The committees are famously tightlipped about their work, deliberations are kept secret for 50 years, and purport to resist outside pressure or public campaigns for or against a certain candidate.

With that in mind, critics say the China visits were inappropriate even if they don't lead to any criminal charges.

"It is insane to let oneself be invited on trips of this kind," said Anders Barany, a former nonvoting secretary of the physics prize committee, and a current voting member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Source : PTI