Interpol

The International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL, is an intergovernmental organization facilitating international police cooperation. It was established as the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) in 1923 and adopted its telegraphic address as its common name in 1956.

Interpol has an annual budget of around €78 million, most of which is provided through annual contributions by its membership of 190 countries. The organization's headquarters is in Lyon, France. It is the second largest international organization after the United Nations in terms of international representation. In 2013, the Interpol General Secretariat employed a staff of 756, representing 100 member countries. Its current Secretary-General is Jürgen Stock, the former deputy head of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office. He replaced Ronald Noble, a former United States Under Secretary of the Treasury for Enforcement, who stepped down in November 2014 after serving 14 years. Succeeding Khoo Boon Hui, Interpol's current President is former Deputy Central Director of the French Judicial Police Mireille Ballestrazzi.

To keep Interpol as politically neutral as possible, its charter forbids it, at least in theory, from undertaking interventions or activities of a political, military, religious, or racial nature or involving itself in disputes over such matters. Its work focuses primarily on public safety and battling terrorism, crimes against humanity, environmental crime, genocide, war crimes, organized crime, piracy, illicit traffic in works of art, illicit drug production, drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, child pornography, white-collar crime, computer crime, intellectual property crime and corruption.

History

In the first part of the 20th century, several efforts were taken to formalize international police cooperation, but they initially failed. Among these efforts were the First International Criminal Police Congress in Monaco in 1914, and the International Police Conference in New York in 1922. The Monaco Congress failed because it was organized by legal experts and political officials, not by police professionals, while the New York Conference failed to attract international attention.

In 1923, a new initiative was taken at the International Criminal Police Congress in Vienna where the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) was successfully founded as the direct forerunner of Interpol. Founding members included police officials from Russia, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Poland, China, Egypt, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. The United States did not join Interpol until 1938, although a US police officer unofficially attended the 1923 congress. The United Kingdom joined in 1928.

Following Anschluss in 1938, the organization fell under the control of Nazi Germany, and the Commission's headquarters were eventually moved to Berlin in 1942. From 1938 to 1945, the presidents of Interpol included Otto Steinhäusl, Reinhard Heydrich, Arthur Nebe, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. All were generals in the SS, and Kaltenbrunner was the highest ranking SS officer executed after the Nuremberg Trials.

After the end of World War II in 1945, the organization was revived as the International Criminal Police Organization by officials from Belgium, France, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom. Its new headquarters were established in Saint-Cloud, a suburb of Paris. They remained there until 1989, when they were moved to their present location in Lyon.

Until the 1980s, Interpol did not intervene in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in accordance with Article 3 of its Charter, which prohibited intervention in "political" matters.

In July 2010, former Interpol President Jackie Selebi was found guilty of corruption by the South African High Court in Johannesburg for accepting bribes worth €156,000 from a drug trafficker. After being charged in January 2008, Selebi resigned as president of Interpol and was put on extended leave as National Police Commissioner of South Africa. He was temporarily replaced by Arturo Herrera Verdugo, the National Commissioner of Investigations Police of Chile and former vice president for the American Zone, who remained acting president until October 2008 and the appointment of Khoo Boon Hui.

On 8 November 2012, the 81st General Assembly closed with the election of Deputy Central Director of the French Judicial Police Mireille Ballestrazzi as the new President of the organization. She thus became Interpol's first female president.

Constitution

The role of Interpol is defined by the general provisions of its constitution.

Article 2 states that its role is:

1. To ensure and promote the widest possible mutual assistance between all criminal police authorities within the limits of the laws existing in the different countries and in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
2. To establish and develop all institutions likely to contribute effectively to the prevention and suppression of ordinary law crimes.

Article 3 states:

It is strictly forbidden for the Organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.

Methodology

Interpol is not a supranational law enforcement agency and has no agents who are able to make arrests. Instead, it is an international organization that functions as a network of criminal law enforcement agencies from different countries. The organization thus functions as an administrative liaison among the law enforcement agencies of the member countries, providing communications and database assistance, assisted via the central headquarters in Lyon, France.

Interpol’s collaborative form of cooperation is useful when fighting international crime because language, cultural and bureaucratic differences can make it difficult for police officials from different nations to work together. For example, if ICE and FBI special agents track a terrorist to Italy, they may not know whom to contact in the Polizia di Stato, if the Carabinieri have jurisdiction over some aspect of the case, or who in the Italian government must be notified of the ICE/FBI's involvement. ICE and FBI can contact the Interpol National Central Bureau in Italy, which would act as a liaison between the United States and Italian law enforcement agencies.

Interpol's databases at the Lyon headquarters can assist law enforcement in fighting international crime. While national agencies have their own extensive crime databases, the information rarely extends beyond one nation's borders. Interpol’s databases can track criminals and crime trends around the world, specifically by means of collections of fingerprints and face photos, lists of wanted persons, DNA samples and travel documents. Interpol’s lost and stolen travel document database alone contains more than 12 million records. Officials at the headquarters also analyze these data and release information on crime trends to the member countries.

An encrypted internet-based worldwide communications network allows Interpol agents and member countries to contact each other at any time. Known as I-24/7, the network offers constant access to Interpol's databases. While the National Central Bureaus are the primary access sites to the network, some member countries have expanded it to key areas such as airports and border access points. Member countries can also access each other's criminal databases via the I-24/7 system.

Interpol issued 13,637 notices in 2013, of which 8,857 were Red Notices, compared to 4,596 in 2008 and 2,037 in 2003. As of 2013, there are currently 52,880 valid notices in circulation.

In the event of an international disaster, terrorist attack or assassination, Interpol can send an Incident Response Team (IRT). IRTs can offer a range of expertise and database access to assist with victim identification, suspect identification and the dissemination of information to other nations' law enforcement agencies. In addition, at the request of local authorities, they can act as a central command and logistics operation to coordinate other law enforcement agencies involved in a case. Such teams were deployed 8 times in 2013. Interpol began issuing its own travel documents in 2009 with hopes that nations would remove visa requirements for individuals travelling for Interpol business, thereby improving response times.

Finances

In 2013, Interpol's operating income was €78 million, of which 68% was contributed by member countries, mostly in the form of statutory contributions (67%) and 26% came from externally funded projects, private foundations and commercial enterprises. Financial income and reimbursements made up the other 6% of the total. From 2004 to 2010, Interpol's external auditors was the French Court of Audit. In November 2010, the Court of Audit was replaced by the Office of the Auditor General of Norway for a three-year term with an option for a further three years.

Controversy

Despite its political neutral stance, some have criticized the agency for its role in arrests that critics contend were politically motivated.

In 2013, Interpol was criticized over its multi-million dollar deals with such private sector bodies as FIFA, Philip Morris, and the pharmaceutical industry. The criticism was mainly about the lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest.

2014 Russian intervention in Ukraine

On 25 July 2014, despite the fact that Constitution prohibits Interpol to undertake any intervention or activities of a political or military nature, the nationalist paramilitary leader of Ukraine Dmytro Yarosh was placed on Interpol's international wanted list at the request of Russian authorities, which made him the only person wanted internationally after the beginning of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in 2014. For a long time, Interpol refused to place on the wanted list the former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych who is being suspected in mass killing of protesters during Euromaidan. He was finally placed on the wanted list on 12 January 2015. In December 2014, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) liquidated sabotage and reconnaissance group that was led by a former agent of the Ukrainian Bureau of Interpol that also has family relations in the Ukrainian counter-intelligence agencies.

Emblem

The current emblem of Interpol was adopted in 1950 and comprises the following elements:

• the globe indicates worldwide activity
• the olive branches represent peace
• the sword represents police action
• the scales signify justice

Members

Sub-bureaus

UN member states without membership

•  Cook Islands
•  North Korea
•  Kiribati
•  Micronesia
•  Niue
•  Palau
•  Solomon Islands
•  Tuvalu
•  Vanuatu

Partially recognised states without membership

•  Palestinian National Authority
•  Taiwan

Offices

In addition to its General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon, Interpol maintains seven regional bureaus:

• Buenos Aires, Argentina
• San Salvador, El Salvador
• Yaoundé, Cameroon
• Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
• Nairobi, Kenya
• Harare, Zimbabwe
• Bangkok, Thailand (Liaison Office)

Interpol's Command and Coordination Centres offer a 24/7 point of contact for national police forces seeking urgent information or facing a crisis. The original is in Lyon with a second in Buenos Aires added in September 2011. A third is scheduled to open in Singapore in September 2014.

Interpol opened a Special Representative Office to the United Nations in New York in 2004 and to the European Union in Brussels in 2009.

The organization is currently constructing the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation (ICGI) in Singapore to act as its research and development facility. It is due to become operational in September 2014.

Secretaries-general and presidents

Secretaries-general since organization's inception in 1923:

Presidents since organization's inception in 1923:

See also

• Interpol Travel Document
• Europol, a similar EU-wide organization.
• Intelligence assessment
• International Criminal Court
• Interpol Terrorism Watch List
• UN Police

References

Notes

External links

• Interpol â€" Official website

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