U.S. and Five Eyes Partners Call Upon International Criminal Police Organization to Suspend Russia From Interpol

Attorney General Merrick Garland has joined with the United States’s “Five Eyes” partners to call upon the International Criminal Police Organization to end Russia’s access to Interpol databases as the Kremlin continues its Ukraine invasion.

Interpol, with its 194 global members, controls a vast quantity of law enforcement data and secure police communications that can be shared with its members, and the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — the five English-speaking member nations, or “eyes,” that comprise the intelligence-sharing alliance — are in agreement that the Russian government’s ability to use those tools must end.

“AG Garland, alongside other justice ministers of the Five Country Ministerial, called on Interpol and its Exec Committee to decide this week on the immediate suspension of Russia’s access to its systems,” Anthony Coley, the director of public affairs at the Justice Department, said Sunday night.

Priti Patel, Britain’s home secretary, said that she and the other Five Eyes partners had called upon Interpol to deny Russia’s continued access to Interpol’s law enforcement databases and other systems, contending that “Russia’s actions are a direct threat to the safety of individuals and to international law enforcement cooperation.”

Interpol’s website says the organization’s National Central Bureau in Moscow deals with “identifying, investigating, and preventing serious crime across Europe and Asia” and that its “global police cooperation activities are centered on Russia’s crime areas of priority concern,” including terrorism, organized crime, “and the international fugitive investigations these generate.”

An Interpol Red Notice “is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.”

Russia has been accused of abusing the Red Notice system in the past.

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The Kremlin has repeatedly asked Interpol to arrest businessman Bill Browder, the head of Hermitage Capital and a Putin critic who has championed the Magnitsky Act, named for his tax lawyer and corruption whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison in 2009 after his investigation allegedly uncovered hundreds of millions of dollars of tax fraud implicating Russian officials. Browder was sentenced in absentia by a Russian court for crimes he denies committing.

Interpol wrote to Browder’s lawyers in 2019 that “the NCB of Russia has authorized the Commission to disclose to you its wish to request police cooperation for your client through an INTERPOL diffusion to arrest.”

Interpol has not carried out Russia’s arrest requests.

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker warned in November that Russia — as well as China, Turkey, and Venezuela — “have routinely misused Interpol to oppress their critics.”

“The case of Bill Browder, a free critic of the Putin regime and advocate for the Magnitsky Act, is probably the most well-known example of such abuse,” Wicker said. “Vladimir Putin has issued no fewer than eight INTERPOL diffusions seeking to have Bill Browder extradited, none of which thankfully have been obeyed.”

Browder has also alleged that the opposition firm Fusion GPS acted as an agent for Russian interests when Putin tried to combat the Magnitsky Act and its sanctions on Russian officials.

Concerns abound that China has also exerted undue influence over Interpol. Back in November, an alliance of international legislators, including Republicans in Congress and exiled Chinese activists, unsuccessfully opposed efforts by a top Chinese internal security official to join the leadership of Interpol.

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Hu Binchen, then the deputy director-general for the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, was elected to serve on Interpol’s executive committee despite concerns he might abuse the power of his perch on China’s behalf.