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By the time INTERPOL deleted the Red Notice, our client had been arrested in two European countries and had spent almost two years unable to cross a border without risking a third. He is a senior Ukrainian executive whose work forms part of his country’s war effort, and the notice was sought by Russia, the state waging war on his own. I acted for him before the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files.
He first called me from custody in Moldova. The allegations were neatly constructed. They were said to be pre-war, and they began life as a civil dispute before the Moscow Court of Arbitration. That commercial claim was transferred into a criminal case, dressed up as a genuine prosecution rather than a political one. The timing told a different story: no criminal case existed, and no Red Notice was sought, until after the full-scale invasion.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General and government were livid: targeting him was a direct attack on the Ukrainian state. The Moldovan courts released him and refused extradition on the ground that the request was politically motivated.
Under Article 40 of the Statute of the CCF, a request to delete data must be decided within nine months of being declared admissible. We applied on that basis. Months passed, and then more months passed. Our client carried on running his company and assisting the Ukrainian government. Then he landed in Italy and checked into a hotel. His passport details were passed to the Italian police, and he was arrested on the same Red Notice that had already failed in Moldova.
Extradition proceedings began. I rang one of Italy’s leading extradition lawyers, who secured his release on bail. In the end the Italians did not proceed and would not cooperate with Russia. But they came close enough: another arrest, a period in detention, a bar on travel, and the appearance that a European court was taking Russia’s allegations seriously. It was exactly what Moscow wanted, and it left our client at real risk.
Almost two years after we applied, the CCF examined the notice. Interim suspension came only two months before the session at which it was deleted, after more than a year in which there had been no real engagement with the case. The decision itself was emphatic. The notice was politically motivated, in breach of Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution, and involved a significant violation of his human rights under Article 2.
The file leaves harder questions unanswered. How was the Notices and Diffusions Task Force, which vets every Red Notice before publication, duped by Russia’s submissions against a man central to the war effort of the country it had invaded? Why did interim relief arrive only after a year of silence? And what use is a nine-month deadline that stretches to nearly two years, when the person concerned can be arrested at any border while he waits? A deadline nobody enforces is not a protection.
The lessons are uncomfortable. Russian notices can be removed, and the political and human rights grounds succeed, but the CCF runs far behind its own timetable, and the notice stays live while the applicant waits. Challenges need to start early. Interim suspension has to be pressed for repeatedly rather than requested once. Local counsel should be lined up in every country the client has to enter, because the arrest comes at the border.
Our INTERPOL practice acts for individuals facing Red Notices and Diffusions, from pre-emptive submissions before a notice is published to deletion requests, interim suspension, and the extradition proceedings that follow an arrest. We work alongside local counsel across Europe and beyond.
Cases like this are why Rhys Davies and I wrote INTERPOL Law and Practice, published by Thomson Reuters on 23 September 2026. It sets out how notices are issued and how the CCF is supposed to operate, and it shows how to challenge abuse at every stage, because the gap between INTERPOL’s rules and INTERPOL’s practice is where clients get hurt.
If you are facing a Red Notice, contact us in confidence.
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