Russia has been using Interpol’s wanted persons lists to request the arrest of political opponents, businessmen, and journalists, and the messaging system of this international organization to track people abroad, according to an investigation by the BBC and the French investigative project Disclose, which examined thousands of documents and messages provided by a whistleblower from Interpol.
Interpol — officially the International Criminal Police Organization — helps locate individuals suspected of crimes who have fled abroad. Its so-called Red Notice is sent to all 196 member countries to locate and arrest a person, while a Red Diffusion is sent only to selected countries.
Documents obtained by the investigators show that additional checks imposed on Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine did not prevent Moscow from abusing Interpol’s system.
According to journalists, over the past decade at least 700 people wanted by Russia have filed complaints with Interpol’s Commission for the Control of Files (CCF), and at least 400 of them succeeded in having Red Notices or Red Diffusions canceled.
For example, Russian businessman Igor Pestrikov managed to have a Red Diffusion canceled. He discovered his name on the list after fleeing Russia in June 2022 and applying for asylum in France. Two years later, the CCF ruled that his case was predominantly political in nature: the information provided by Russia was “general and boilerplate,” and the alleged crime was “insufficiently substantiated.”
From the messages exchanged between countries, investigators learned that Russia used the system to track the whereabouts of suspects. One such message concerned journalist Armen Aramyan, who in 2022 was convicted in Russia of “involving minors in unlawful activities” for reporting on protests in support of Alexei Navalny in January 2021.
Aramyan left for Armenia and then Germany. In a message sent to law enforcement authorities in both countries, Russia reportedly bypassed the process of issuing a Red Notice or Red Diffusion and instead requested “any useful information” about Aramyan and his location. Journalists note that based on the data available to them, they cannot say for sure whether Russia received a response, but their source believes that “it did.”
According to the leak, Interpol also sent Russian authorities details about the movements of Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol and former Federal Protective Service officer Gleb Karakulov, who fled Russia. The exchange of information about Karakulov, according to investigators, took place after additional checks on Moscow had been announced.
One report states that in 2024 Russia attempted to issue Red Diffusions against judges and a prosecutor of the International Criminal Court — after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.
Interpol told journalists that the organization “follows its constitution, which strictly prohibits the use of its systems for information of a predominantly political, military, religious, or racial character.”
British lawyer Ben Keith, who has represented people seeking to have their names removed from Interpol’s lists, believes that “Russia is one of the main offenders in abusing Red Notices,” and that Interpol has a particular problem with Russia. Attempts by the agency to prevent such abuses have not been successful, Current Time reports.
