Today’s post is a continuation of our series on INTERPOL’s CCF, its annual reports, and what the information in those reports might mean for a Red Notice subject seeking to have a Red Notice removed.

In the CCF most recent annual report, the Commission conveyed its observations about a variety of subjects, including a growing workload, challenges within the organization, and the actions of its member countries’ National Central Bureaus (“NCBs”).

On the topic of NCBs, the report, found here, confirms that one of the reasons that a Red Notice subject’s data may be removed from INTERPOL’s databases has to do with the NCBs. More often than we might imagine, the NCB of a member country simply fails to respond, or responds insufficiently, to the CCF’s inquiries about a particular Red Notice removal request. As a result, in 40 cases that were considered by the CCF during the annual reporting period,

… the NCB(s) at the source of the data challenged did not provide appropriate answers to the questions raised by the CCF, and therefore the data were deleted from INTERPOL’s files…..

In still other cases, it appears that the NCB or INTERPOL’s General Secretariat recognized that there was a problem with the case, or that the requesting country was no longer interested in maintaining the Red Notice:

… in 69 other cases, either the General Secretariat or the NCB at the source of the challenged data decided to delete the data from INTERPOL’s files before the Commission had taken a decision.

The report indicates that, while Red Notices are sometimes removed based on the evidence presented by the applicant, they are also sometimes removed based on the requesting country’s failure to respond properly to the CCF’s inquiries. This is another example of the “X factor” at work: sometimes a case is won because of an unpredictable variable, and that variable becomes possible only when a removal effort is made.

As always, thoughts and comments are welcomed.