Red Alert

Interpol’s new chief must stop Russia’s abuse of international arrest warrants

- Kamran Bokhari 

VLADIMIR PUTIN HAS LONG used his influence over key international institutions to fuel Russia’s expansion.

There’s the United Nations, where his Security Council veto power allowed him to manipulate the Syrian war, and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the nuclear weapons watchdog where he delayed attempts to hold countries accountable for gas attacks.

But the organization over which Putin arguably exercises the most power is Interpol, the world’s largest police agency. To squash political dissent, Russia has issued a growing number of so-called red notices, international warrants that make individuals subject to arrest in any Interpol member state around the world. Sometimes the targets were political dissidents or environmental activists. And sometimes they were as innocuous as the chairman of a Hungarian company that was unlucky enough to beat pro-Kremlin energy giant Gazprom to a deal.

That’s why, in late November, the free world breathed a collective sigh of relief at the appointment of South Korea’s Kim Jong-yang as the new Interpol chief. The favorite had been Alexander Prokopchuk, one of Putin’s most trusted generals. But the threat is far from over: Although he lost out in the leadership election, Prokopchuk will remain in the agency’s senior management.

The significance of Interpol’s president has long been underestimated in Western capitals, but just as Russia’s manipulation of Facebook appears to have damaged U.S. democracy, its exploitation of the world’s largest police force threatens the EU.