International police cooperation, carried out within the framework of Interpol, the largest international intergovernmental organisation, has fallen victim to dangerous political games. Thousands of documents obtained by the BBC and the French investigative agency Disclose from an informant within the International Criminal Police Organisation have revealed Russia’s constant and systematic abuse of the organisation’s mechanisms to persecute political opponents, critics of the authorities and businessmen outside the Russian Federation.
Interpol’s international operating principle is quite simple. Each of the 196 member countries can send so-called ‘red notices’ to the system, requests to law enforcement agencies around the world to ‘locate and provisionally arrest’ an individual prior to extradition. At the same time, there is a mechanism called ‘red diffusion’ – a less formal request for information about a person’s whereabouts, sent only to certain countries. Both mechanisms were originally designed to combat serious crimes. However, a leak of the organisation’s internal data shows that Moscow is using them for political purposes.
According to a BBC analysis, over the past decade, the independent Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF) has received more complaints about Russia than any other country, three times more than Turkey, which ranks second. These complaints have led to the cancellation or modification of Russian requests more often than for any other member country.
Internal Interpol reports obtained by BBC and Disclose journalists show that concerns about Russia’s actions were systematic and long-standing. In correspondence and memos addressed to both the General Secretariat and national bureaux, senior officials pointed to the Russian side’s ‘deliberate abuse’ of Interpol mechanisms and emphasised that this was not a matter of isolated errors or misunderstandings, but of a recurring practice. In one of the documents referenced by journalists, Russian representatives were told of ‘serious concern’ that the requests systematically violated Article 3 of the Interpol Constitution, which prohibits any political interference, and some episodes were described as ‘flagrant violations’ of the organisation’s basic rules.
The reports also point to internal conflict between Interpol’s political leadership and its oversight mechanisms. On the one hand, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, additional filters and checks were introduced regarding Moscow, including to prevent the persecution of individuals in the conflict zone or who had left Russia for political reasons. On the other hand, statistics obtained by the BBC show that these measures have had limited effectiveness. In 2024, about 90% of Russian requests still passed the initial check and entered the system before becoming the subject of complaints from the individuals concerned or their lawyers.
Only at the next stage, when cases were reviewed by an independent supervisory body, the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF), were a significant number of Russian requests found to be problematic. Approximately half of the requests that were the subject of complaints were ultimately rejected or deleted from the databases as politically motivated. This discrepancy between the high percentage of requests approved at the outset and the large number of subsequent rejections intensified internal debate about whether the initial filters were strict enough and whether Interpol was becoming, albeit temporarily, a tool for exerting pressure before violations could be corrected. According to BBC sources, it is this gap that has become one of the key reasons for growing criticism within the organisation itself and doubts about the effectiveness of the restrictive measures introduced.
Even more worrying is that within the organisation in 2024-2025, there were discussions about lifting additional restrictions on Russian requests, and according to the BBC’s source, some of these measures were lifted in 2025.
The leaked data reveals that Russia is not limited to searching for ‘classic’ political opponents and has attempted to use the ‘red diffusion’ mechanism even against judges and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. Although these requests were rejected by national law enforcement agencies, the fact that they were widely circulated raises questions about the Russian authorities’ intentions.
The leak contains numerous details about the requests made by Russian security forces and the responses of foreign law enforcement agencies regarding the whereabouts of specific individuals.
Among them is Lyubov Sobol, a well-known Russian opposition figure and activist who is a close associate of Alexei Navalny. The documents indicate that her whereabouts were requested through the Interpol system. Gleb Karakulov, a former employee of the Federal Security Service who later became a critic of the regime, also appears in the requests that were sent out. Armen Aramyan, editor of DOXA, who gained fame after covering protests and repression in Russia, has also become the subject of interest of Russian law enforcement agencies through direct or indirect requests, according to the documents. Igor Pestrikov, former co-owner of the Solikamsk Magnesium Plant, who left Russia in the summer of 2022 due to pressure from the authorities on his business, was able to challenge the search request by proving its political motivation and have himself removed from the Interpol database.
Although each of these episodes has its own characteristics, they all have one thing in common: Russian police forces are using international cooperation tools not to fight crime, but as a means of exerting pressure, surveillance or even extradition against opponents of the Kremlin regime outside Russia.
Although the main focus is now on the BBC/Disclose leak, Russia’s practice of using Interpol for political purposes has been noted before. One of the most famous examples is the case of British-American financier William Browder, a critic of corruption in Russia. Moscow repeatedly attempted to secure his arrest and extradition through a ‘red notice,’ which led to detentions and legal disputes in Europe until the requests were cancelled as politically motivated.
Previously, Russia’s red notices concerning opposition activists have also been rejected by courts and national authorities on the grounds of political motivation, for example in the case of Nikolai Koblyakov, an anti-Putin activist whose notices were removed by Interpol and whose extradition was rejected by a French court.
When the BBC provided requests and leaked data for comment, Interpol emphasised that the organisation strictly follows its Constitution, which prohibits the use of resources for political, military, religious or racial purposes, and that the allegations are based on a ‘misunderstanding of how Interpol’s systems work’.
In its response, the organisation emphasised that cooperation between international law enforcement agencies is vital and that the priority remains the fight against crime, rather than the ‘names of member states,’ although Interpol acknowledges cases of abuse and the complexity of assessing such requests.
These risks are noted by human rights activists and international legal experts, who call for tighter controls and, if necessary, sanctions against malicious countries, up to and including temporary suspension of their access to Interpol systems.