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Most writing about INTERPOL focuses on Red Notices and political motives. Chapter 6 of our book, INTERPOL Law and Practice, published by Thomson Reuters on 23 September 2026, deals with the cases that don’t receive the same coverage: the person acquitted at home whose notice is still live; the person whose ‘crime’ is a business dispute; the person under a blue or green notice nobody will explain; and the person named in a diffusion that never appeared in any database.
One case in the chapter shows how these challenges work.
The applicant had been acquitted. The requesting state’s National Central Bureau (NCB) insisted that its arrest warrant, and with it the Red Notice, remained valid.
The Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files (CCF) did not take the NCB at its word. It asked for documents confirming that the proceedings were still valid after the acquittal and sent a reminder when none arrived. The NCB never provided them. Under INTERPOL’s rules, an NCB that fails to answer the Commission’s requests leaves its data open to deletion for non-compliance.
The applicant did not have to prove anything about the state’s politics. The state had to show that its own case still existed, and it could not. The same burden applies across Chapter 6: wherever the CCF asks a question, it is the requesting NCB that must answer it.
The Commission does not judge a country’s legal system in the abstract, but it does ask whether the proceedings behind a notice are still valid. Where an applicant has been acquitted and the NCB produces no updated findings, the CCF may find the notice unjustified.
A notice can also come too early. Where an investigation is still at a preliminary stage, with no charge laid and no extradition request made, the CCF has generally found no justification for a Red Notice. A notice used to make someone cooperate with an investigation, rather than to extradite them, is outside INTERPOL’s mandate altogether.
A Red Notice must rest on judicial data describing what the person did, when and where. General association with corporate decisions is not enough. In fraud, corporate-raiding and corruption cases, the CCF also looks for personal benefit. In one published excerpt, an NCB alleged profit from falsified tax declarations but produced no evidence, and the Commission held that unsupported assertions do not meet INTERPOL’s threshold.
Seriousness is a separate test. A purely civil dispute, such as a financial disagreement with no element of fraud, does not qualify. Nor does a purely domestic matter with no cross-border dimension.
Blue Notices seek to locate a person during an investigation, and the CCF has confirmed that they need no arrest warrant. The arguments that work are different: that the person is not a convicted, charged or suspected person, a witness or a victim; that the conduct is not criminal; or that the NCB has shown no reasonable need for the information.
Green Notices, which warn of a risk a person may pose, are harder to shift, and challenges have tended to fail. Yellow Notices are for missing persons. In the chapter’s example, the CCF accepted that a child was not missing, because the authorities knew where he was, yet upheld the notice because it would help locate him if he travelled.
A Diffusion is a request that one NCB sends directly to other member countries, without going through INTERPOL’s formal notice process. Because Diffusions are not governed by the same rules as notices, the CCF judges each one against the notice it most resembles. A Diffusion asking for someone’s arrest with a view to extradition is therefore held to the Red Notice standard. The requesting state must be actively seeking extradition, or the Diffusion has no purpose. It must also describe the allegation properly: the person’s role, what they did, when and how, and in financial cases, what they gained.
Many CCF cases succeed on a combination of arguments. The ones most often left out are validity, description, seriousness and purpose, and they are the ones that force the requesting state to answer or lose the notice. We act for people facing Red Notices, Diffusions and other INTERPOL notices, and build each application around the questions the state will find hardest to answer. If you are subject to a Blue, Green or Yellow Notice, a Diffusion, or a Red Notice that rests on a thin allegation, contact us in confidence.
This article draws on Chapter 6 of INTERPOL Law and Practice by Rhys Davies and Ben Keith, published by Thomson Reuters on 23 September 2026. Order from Sweet & Maxwell.
For the arguments on political motive and human rights, see our earlier post on Chapter 5, What Wins at the CCF?
