Interpol General Assembly Inches Forward on Transparency, Still Needs Reform Strategy
December 9, 2024
This year’s Interpol General Assembly went surprisingly well for democratic member States. Unexpected defeats for Russia and the United Arab Emirates at the top of the organization showed what the democracies can achieve in this global police-coordination agency. But if law-abiding nations want to continue to build on – or preserve – their fundamentally strong position in Interpol, they need a strategy that extends their leadership positions and that continues the push for reform in advance of next year’s General Assembly.
This year’s meeting Nov. 4-7 in Glasgow, Scotland, marked the end of the second term of the long-serving Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock of Germany.
Interpol Under Spotlight in Suspected Asylum-for-Sale Scam
A ploy that allegedly helped suspected criminals has exposed a dangerous vulnerability at the world’s crimefighting agency.
How a Corruption ‘Carousel’ Got Fugitives Off Interpol’s Red Notice List
Suspects sought on various charges, including drug trafficking, paid officials to exploit a mechanism intended to protect asylum seekers, according to Moldovan and French investigators.
By Andrew Higgins
Reporting from Chisinau, Moldova, and from Paris
Nov. 15, 2024
The suspect in a drug trafficking case was wanted in France in connection with three tons of cocaine seized near Marseille in 2020 but had fled abroad. He was placed on a list of fugitives flagged for arrest by Interpol, the international police organization, and later detained in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
France filed an extradition request with Dubai, but then the French authorities discovered that the suspect, Tarik Kerbouci, 39, had been removed from the Interpol list. Set free by Dubai, Mr. Kerbouci vanished.
- A long investigation by French and other law enforcement agencies into how the Interpol arrest flag, called a Red Notice, had disappeared led to an unlikely destination: the former Soviet republic of Moldova. There, a scheme that helped remove Mr. Kerbouci and at least 20 other wanted fugitives from the list unraveled this summer.
Evidence collected by French investigators and prosecutors in Moldova exposed a flip side of such abuse: Fugitives would arrange for the lifting of Red Notices against them by paying corrupt officials to exploit provisions intended to protect dissidents and others seeking asylum.
- Also under scrutiny for possible involvement is a former senior Interpol official from Moldova who relocated to Dubai after leaving the police organization in 2022.
Veronica Dragalin, Moldova’s chief anticorruption prosecutor, at her office in Chisinau in October .Credit...Andreea Campeanu for The New York TimesFugitives like Mr. Kerbouci, she said, managed to lift Red Notices against them by convincing Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, France, that they had requested asylum in Moldova, even though they had never been there.
In an effort to protect refugees fleeing persecution, Interpol does not allow Red Notices against officially registered asylum seekers.
The asylum requests made by Mr. Kerbouci and other suspects, Ms. Dragalin said, were “entirely fraudulent,” fabricated by corrupt immigration officers in Moldova and certified as genuine by the Interpol office in Chisinau.
“The mechanism worked like a big carousel going round and round,” Moldova’s police chief, Viorel Cernauteanu, said. “On the surface it all looked legal, but underneath it was all based on fraud and lies.”
- The carousel began, he said, with petitions by fugitives or their lawyers to an Interpol commission in Lyon responsible for reviewing Red Notices.
- They would ask that a notice be lifted because of an asylum request in Moldova. As supporting evidence, they would provide fraudulent confirmation of the asylum request from the Moldovan immigration authorities.
In Chisinau. Some fugitives managed to lift Red Notices against them by asserting that they had requested asylum in Moldova, even though they had never been there
The organization declined to comment on the misuse of its name.
That, Chief Cernauteanu of the Moldovan police said, was “obviously untrue.”
“There was no real verification of whether these people ever entered our country,” he added.
- The F.B.I. said it was providing technical assistance to help decipher data on telephones and computers seized in the raids.
- British law enforcement has also been involved because of a separate but overlapping inquiry into what investigators in London described as “high harm cybercriminals” who paid Moldovan officials to reveal whether Interpol had issued Red Notices against them.
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In addition to Mr. Kerbouci, nine Chinese nationals, the son of a former prime minister of Kyrgyzstan, a fugitive Australian businessman, two Ukrainians, a citizen of Belarus and fugitives with other nationalities used the scheme, according to a list compiled by Moldova and obtained by The Times.
- It cost $1 million to $3 million in bribes and payments to lawyers for each suspect to purge their Red Notices, Ms. Dragalin said.
The investigation that led to the raids in Moldova began last year when Interpol detected what it described in a statement as “attempted misuse in a small number of cases to block and delete Red Notices.” It reported the matter to the French police, who opened the inquiry in August/
A view over Chisinau. It cost $1 million to $3 million in bribes and payments to lawyers for each suspect to purge their Red Notices, Ms. Dragalin said.
Prosecutors in Paris, who have been working closely with Ms. Dragalin’s office, said in a statement that evidence collected in France had pointed to “a corruption scheme to allow fugitives to block and erase Red Notices targeting them, by paying bribes to public officials, particularly in Moldova.”
- The prosecutor handling the case in France declined in an interview to identify any French nationals who had used the scheme or to comment on Mr. Kerbouci, the suspect in the drug trafficking case.
The current pro-Western leadership in Moldova has made “some progress” in that regard, according to a report last year by the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union. But Moldova is still dealing with the legacy of Vladimir Plahotniuc, a powerful tycoon who, with support from the United States, which viewed him as a bulwark against Russian influence, gained control over much of the country’s law enforcement, intelligence and judicial systems in the 2010s.
- Mr. Plahotniuc fled Moldova in 2019 after his political allies lost an election. He has since been charged in absentia with creating and leading a criminal organization, fraud and money laundering.
- One of his protégés during his ascendancy in Moldova was Mr. Pirlog, who, after serving as justice minister and intelligence service director, became chairman of the Red Notice commission at Interpol in 2017.
“While we are confident in the strength of our systems, we do not tolerate misuse of any kind,” he added.
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