The short answer. Yes. Besides notices and diffusions, INTERPOL's network carries "messages": requests one National Central Bureau sends directly to others and chooses not to record in any INTERPOL database. Nobody is told, and an access request to the Commission may find nothing. The Interpol Files leak of January 2026 showed the method in use: a bureau, refused a Red Notice, still asking another country where its target was.
The third channel
Article 1(15) of the data rules defines a message as a request, alert or data a bureau sends to other bureaus through the INTERPOL Information System “but that it chooses, unless otherwise indicated, not to simultaneously record” in a police database. Article 9 entitles every bureau to send them and bars the General Secretariat from recording one without the sender’s consent. A message is the mirror image of a diffusion: same network, same recipients, no record.
What the leak showed
Thousands of leaked messages examined by the BBC World Service and Disclose revealed a less formal route to trace people abroad. In one, Moscow told police in Abu Dhabi that INTERPOL had refused a Red Notice but that it still wanted help finding the person. Another, sent in February 2023 to Armenia and Germany, sought the whereabouts of journalist Armen Aramyan, convicted at home for reporting on protests. Replies in the files included the movements of a Navalny ally and a high-profile defector. INTERPOL’s rule after an Article 2 or 3 refusal: “no further cooperation is allowed to take place via INTERPOL”.
Why nobody checks
Two amendments narrowed oversight of this channel. In November 2024 the General Assembly rewrote Article 22(6) of the data rules: where the General Secretariat is not a recipient, it secures the exchange but “shall not access INTERPOL’s communications infrastructure for the content” unless aware of a potential violation. In November 2025 the Commission’s Statute followed (Article 19(2)): the Commission cannot review information shared directly between bureaus unless a serious violation is reported to it. The Commission’s 2024 report records the review that produced both.
What this means for you
An access request asks the General Secretariat whether data about you are “being processed” in the Information System (Statute Article 33(2)). A message never recorded is invisible to that check, so “no data” can be true and incomplete at once. The trail exists in the receiving country’s police files, held under its own law. In the European Union, Directive 2016/680 gives you a right of access to police data about you (Articles 14 to 17), through the national authority or its data-protection supervisor. And a message pursuing a request INTERPOL has already refused is the “potential violation” that unlocks the General Secretariat’s and the Commission’s powers — if someone reports it. Finding out what INTERPOL holds remains the first step; asking the country where you live what it received is the second.
Related
- What is an INTERPOL diffusion?
- How do I find out if I have a Red Notice?
- What does Fair Trials think of INTERPOL?
- INTERPOL — Rules on the Processing of Data, Articles 1(15), 8(4), 9, 22(6) and 101 — interpol.int
- Statute of the CCF, Articles 3, 19(2) and 33(2), as amended on 27 November 2025 — interpol.int
- INTERPOL — About the CCF: update of the CCF Statute — interpol.int
- INTERPOL — Notices: compliance and review (no further cooperation via INTERPOL after an Article 2 or 3 denial) — interpol.int
- CCF Annual Activity Report 2024, paragraph 46 — interpol.int
- BBC World Service and Disclose, 26 January 2026 — Russia using Interpol's wanted list to target critics abroad, leak reveals — bbc.com
- JURIST, 27 January 2026 — Interpol leaked files reveal states abuse red notices to target dissidents — jurist.org
- Directive (EU) 2016/680 on the processing of personal data by police and judicial authorities, Articles 14 to 17 — eur-lex.europa.eu
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