Moldova Uncovers Fraudulent Scheme to Get Criminals Off Interpol Blacklist

The suspect in a drug trafficking case was wanted in France in connection with three tons of cocaine seized near Marseille in 2020 but had fled abroad. He was placed on a list of fugitives flagged for arrest by Interpol, the international police organization, and later detained in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

France filed an extradition request with Dubai, but then the French authorities discovered that the suspect, Tarik Kerbouci, 39, had been removed from the Interpol list. Set free by Dubai, Mr. Kerbouci vanished.

A long investigation by French and other law enforcement agencies into how the Interpol arrest flag, called a Red Notice, had disappeared led to an unlikely destination: the former Soviet republic of Moldova. There, a scheme that helped remove Mr. Kerbouci and at least 20 other wanted fugitives from the list unraveled this summer.

The Red Notices are a system of requests to border guards and police forces around the globe to locate and detain fugitives. The notices have been dogged by abuse. China, Russia and other autocratic countries have regularly tried to use them to pursue dissidents and other perceived enemies living abroad, a problem that Interpol has in recent years worked to curb.

Evidence collected by French investigators and prosecutors in Moldova exposed a flip side of such abuse: Fugitives would arrange for the lifting of Red Notices against them by paying corrupt officials to exploit provisions intended to protect dissidents and others seeking asylum.

In Moldova, according to Veronica Dragalin, the country’s chief anticorruption prosecutor, the scheme involved Interpol’s liaison office in the capital, Chisinau, as well as immigration officials. Also under scrutiny for possible involvement is a former senior Interpol official from Moldova who relocated to Dubai after leaving the police organization in 2022.