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Argentina has asked INTERPOL to publish Red Notices against people linked to the Sea Lion oil project north of the Falkland Islands. The requests became public in mid-October, when The Guardian reported that the UK government had written to INTERPOL’s headquarters in Lyon calling them politically motivated, and that British nationals were among those sought. INTERPOL responded by reaffirming Article 3 of its Constitution. It is not yet known how many people are affected or whether any notice has been issued.
The requests rest on criminal proceedings in Argentina. In early September the government announced that the Foreign Minister, Pablo Quirno, would file a criminal complaint, and on 8 September he filed it against three Navitas companies, the licence holder JHI Associates, Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas and their directors and managers. Navitas operates Sea Lion with a 65 per cent stake, and Rockhopper Exploration holds the remainder. The complaint relies on Law 26.659, which bars hydrocarbon activity on what Argentina defines as its continental shelf without Argentine permission and which, since a 2013 amendment, has carried prison terms of five to fifteen years. It followed President Javier Milei’s announcement of measures against companies involved in Falklands oil and gas, with penalties he said could extend to shareholders, directors and suppliers. On 15 September the federal prosecutor Carlos Stornelli formally accused directors and shareholders of Navitas and of Rockhopper Exploration, its minority partner.
In September Milei also warned that Argentina would take the UK to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea unless work on Sea Lion stopped. On 13 October Argentina asked the tribunal in Hamburg for provisional measures, pending the constitution of an arbitral tribunal under Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. These include an order that the UK prevent hydrocarbon exploitation through Sea Lion and grant no new permits. The hearing is listed for 10 and 11 November. The UK has said it will take part, will resist any attempt to use the proceedings to settle sovereignty, and will treat any measures prescribed as binding.
INTERPOL’s Red Notice system serves a real purpose, and most of the notices it publishes concern ordinary crime. Article 3 of its Constitution exists to stop a member state turning that system to other ends, since it makes it strictly forbidden for the organisation to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.
INTERPOL applies a predominance test. Under Article 34 of the Rules on the Processing of Data, read with the General Secretariat’s Repository of Practice on Article 3, the General Secretariat looks at the charges, the facts behind them and the status of the person sought. It also weighs who supplied the data, any position taken by another member country, obligations under international law, the implications for INTERPOL’s own neutrality, and the general context. The Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files does the same on review. If the political elements outweigh the ordinary-law ones, the request fails. Article 83 of the Rules also limits Red Notices to serious ordinary-law crime.
Measured against those factors, the Sea Lion requests have little to stand on. The conduct in question is the development of an offshore oil field licensed by the Falkland Islands Government, which administers the waters where it lies, and Phase 1 drilling is not expected to begin until early 2027. That conduct is criminal only if Argentina’s claim to those waters is correct, and that claim is the very thing the two states dispute. The source of the request points the same way, since the complaint was lodged by the Foreign Minister and another member country has already objected in writing. Issuing a notice would, in effect, ask police forces around the world to take Argentina’s side in a territorial dispute, which is a direct threat to INTERPOL’s neutrality.
Argentina may answer that its case extends to environmental, customs or money-laundering offences. Extra counts do not change the character of a case, however, because INTERPOL looks at the facts behind the charge sheet, and here those facts still describe a licensed oil field. A sovereignty dispute does not become ordinary crime because one side has written it into its criminal code.
Refusing a Red Notice does not close off the risk. Argentina’s National Central Bureau can still circulate a Diffusion directly to other member countries, and a sympathetic state can act on it before the General Secretariat has looked at it. The pressure is already working outside INTERPOL: Halliburton has said it will not take part in Sea Lion or other Falklands development after contacts with Argentine authorities about potential criminal, civil and regulatory enforcement. Andrea Clausen, chief executive of the Falkland Islands Government, has acknowledged the threat. She said she would hope INTERPOL would not act, and that those with an interest had studied its Constitution. Anyone named in the Argentine case, or working for the companies involved, can ask the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files whether INTERPOL holds data about them, and should consider a pre-emptive submission before any notice or Diffusion is published.
