47 Fun Facts About Interpol

In which French city is Interpol headquartered?

Lyon has housed the General Secretariat since 1989, in a purpose-built complex. Its previous building, near Paris, had been attacked three years earlier by the extremist group Action Directe.

In which city was the forerunner of Interpol founded in 1923?

Vienna remained its home for fifteen years, which proved its undoing: when Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Nazi authorities deposed the organisation's president and took control of it.

Which car-industry boss, wanted through Interpol since 2020, fled Japan hidden in a box aboard a private jet?

Carlos Ghosn surfaced in Lebanon, which has no extradition agreement with Japan. An Interpol alert could not change that: each country decides for itself what to do about one.

Where does the name 'Interpol' come from?

Its telegraphic address, used since 1946, was only a short handle for cables, a contraction of 'international police'. The nickname stuck, and ten years later the organisation made it part of its official name.

Which language is one of Interpol's four official languages?

Arabic is used alongside English, French and Spanish. Chinese, the most widely spoken first language on Earth, is not on the list.

Which crypto founder was arrested in Montenegro in 2023 after Interpol circulated an alert for him?

Do Kwon, whose TerraUSD coin had collapsed in 2022, was stopped at the airport as he tried to fly to Dubai on falsified travel documents. Prosecutors in his home country had asked for the alert the previous September.

What does an Interpol Red Notice ask police around the world to do?

Locate and arrest a wanted person, pending extradition: that is the request, but it is not an arrest warrant and no country has to act on it. The first, in 1947, sought a man wanted for killing a policeman.

Which colour of Interpol notice is used to locate a missing person?

Yellow Notices can go public: most Interpol notices are for police eyes only, but a country that wants the public's help in finding someone can have an extract posted on Interpol's website.

An Interpol Black Notice seeks information about what?

Unidentified bodies are what a Black Notice is for. In 2023 Interpol took some public in its Identify Me appeal, asking for help naming 22 women found dead in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.

What does an Interpol Orange Notice warn police about?

An imminent threat to safety is the trigger. The Orange Notice was created in 2004 to warn about dangers such as disguised weapons and parcel bombs, the first new type of notice since 1946.

Since 2009 Interpol has issued its officials its own version of which document?

Passport: Interpol hoped countries would waive visas for staff carrying its travel document, cutting response times when a member asks for urgent help. It works only where a country agrees to accept it.

Which notice colour did Interpol begin piloting in 2025 to trace criminal assets?

Silver Notice number one was requested by Italy, seeking information on the assets of a senior mafia figure.

Interpol and the UN Security Council created a special notice in 2005, first aimed at whom?

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were already under UN sanctions. The notice put the names on that list in front of border police worldwide, so that the asset freezes and travel bans could be enforced.

Which sports body's €20 million donation did Interpol suspend in 2015, after a corruption scandal engulfed its leaders?

FIFA's money was meant to fund a programme against match-fixing. After the 2015 arrests Interpol froze the deal, then cut its ties with the private donors that had drawn criticism.

What is the name of Interpol's encrypted global communications network?

I-24/7 reaches beyond police headquarters: countries can extend it to airports and border posts, where an officer can check a traveller's papers against Interpol's files in real time.

In 2014 Interpol revealed that two passengers on which flight had boarded with travel papers listed as stolen?

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 carried two Iranian men travelling on stolen Austrian and Italian documents, both already on Interpol's list. Investigators later ruled the pair out as suspects.

Under Nazi control after 1938, Interpol's headquarters were eventually moved to which city?

Berlin became its base once the Nazis had seized control, and real police cooperation across borders through the body largely dried up until the war was over.

Which Wannsee Conference chair served as president of Interpol's forerunner?

Reinhard Heydrich held the presidency from 1940 as head of the Nazi security police. He was ambushed in Prague by Czechoslovak agents in May 1942, four months after the conference, and died of his wounds.

At Sweden's request, Interpol made public a wanted notice in November 2010 for whom?

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was wanted by Sweden for questioning over sexual-offence allegations, which he denied. To avoid being sent there he spent nearly seven years inside Ecuador's embassy in London.

Interpol's 2023 Identify Me appeal named a British murder victim after her family recognised what in a news report?

Her tattoo, a flower, was spotted by a relative reading about the appeal. Rita Roberts had gone unnamed for 31 years after she was found dead in Antwerp in 1992.

As of 2025, which of these countries remains outside Interpol?

North Korea and the tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu are the only fully recognised states that stay out. Even heavily sanctioned countries such as Iran, Syria and Cuba are members.

In September 2017 Interpol voted to admit which two new members?

Palestine and the Solomon Islands were voted in at the same General Assembly. Israel tried to have the Palestinian vote delayed and failed: 75 countries backed the bid.

Which country waited until 1938 to join Interpol, despite sending an unofficial observer to its founding congress?

The United States picked an awkward moment to sign up: 1938 was the very year the organisation fell into Nazi hands, and most members soon stopped taking part.

On Interpol's emblem, which object stands for police action, beside scales for justice and olive branches for peace?

A sword, drawn upright, carries that meaning. The whole emblem is protected by treaty, much as national flags and coats of arms are, so no outsider may use it without Interpol's written permission.

In which Asian city did Interpol open its Global Complex for Innovation in 2015?

Singapore's complex was at work before its ribbon was cut: its cyber centre coordinated a worldwide takedown of the Simda botnet, and the results were announced at the official opening in April 2015.

Interpol issued a wanted notice in 2020 for Jan Marsalek, a fugitive executive of which collapsed company?

Wirecard, a German payments firm, filed for insolvency in June 2020 after revealing that 1.9 billion euros on its books was missing. Marsalek fled Germany when he was dismissed and has since been traced to Moscow.

Which film director, long the subject of an Interpol alert at American request, was arrested in Zurich in 2009?

Roman Polanski had fled America in 1978, before sentencing in a sex case. Swiss police detained him when he flew in to collect a festival award, but Switzerland refused to extradite him and let him go.

Interpol issued a wanted notice in 2003 for Charles Taylor, the exiled former president of which West African country?

Liberia's former warlord-president was then living in exile in Nigeria. He was later convicted of aiding war crimes in neighbouring Sierra Leone and is serving 50 years in a British prison.

Valdecy Urquiza, elected Interpol's secretary-general in 2024, is a federal police officer from which country?

Brazil's candidate still had to win a vote: Interpol's Executive Committee picked him in June 2024, but the job was his only once member countries endorsed him at their General Assembly in Glasgow that November.

What happened to Interpol's president, Meng Hongwei, in 2018?

He vanished into detention in China: his wife, left behind in France, said his last message to her was a knife emoji. A Chinese court later jailed him for thirteen and a half years for taking bribes.

Refugee footballer Hakeem al-Araibi was arrested on holiday in Thailand in 2018 on an Interpol notice requested by which country?

Bahrain wanted him over the vandalising of a police station, which he denied. After a worldwide campaign led by former Australian captain Craig Foster, Thailand let him fly home to Melbourne.

Western governments lobbied against the front-runner for Interpol's presidency in 2018, a police general from which country?

Russia's Alexander Prokopchuk was accused of using Interpol notices to target critics of his own government. Members elected South Korea's Kim Jong Yang instead.

Which country's inspector general Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi became Interpol president in 2021 amid rights complaints?

The United Arab Emirates put him forward despite complaints from former prisoners, among them British academic Matthew Hedges, who was held there on a spying charge in 2018 and says he was tortured.

Interpol issued a wanted notice in 2022 for billionaire Isabel dos Santos, daughter of which African country's longtime president?

Angola was ruled for 38 years by her father, who put her in charge of the state oil company, Sonangol. Within months of his leaving office she was removed from the post, and the country later sought her arrest.

Jackie Selebi, who quit as Interpol president in 2008 and was later jailed for corruption, had been police chief of which country?

South Africa's most senior policeman was convicted in 2010 in a bribery case and sentenced to 15 years. He was released on medical parole in 2012, suffering from kidney failure.

Which financier's memoir Red Notice describes the Kremlin's failed attempts to have Interpol pursue him?

Bill Browder was refused entry in 2005 after years as the country's largest foreign portfolio investor. He turned campaigner after his tax adviser Sergei Magnitsky died in a Moscow jail, and sanctions laws now carry Magnitsky's name.

In 2020 Iran asked Interpol for a Red Notice against which sitting head of state?

Donald Trump was named in an Iranian arrest warrant in June 2020 over the drone strike that killed General Qasem Soleimani. Interpol declined to act, saying its rules bar it from political and military cases.

The first International Criminal Police Congress met in 1914 at the invitation of which small state's ruling prince?

Monaco's Prince Albert I brought together lawyers and police from 24 countries to discuss identification techniques and extradition. Their plans were shelved within months, when the First World War broke out.

In which 2005 Nicolas Cage film does Ethan Hawke play a relentless Interpol agent?

Lord of War's arms dealer strongly resembles Viktor Bout, a real trafficker wanted on a Belgian warrant circulated through Interpol. Three years after the film, Bout was caught in a sting in Bangkok.

Europol, the European Union's counterpart to Interpol, is based in which city?

The Hague hosts Europol, which began life in the 1990s as a drugs unit. Its remit now runs from terrorism to cybercrime and money laundering.

Which three Interpol members are dependent territories of the Netherlands rather than sovereign states?

Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten are self-governing countries within the Dutch kingdom, with police forces of their own. The last two joined in 2011, the year after the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved.

Which territory lost its Interpol seat in 1984, when the People's Republic of China took it over?

Taiwan had joined in 1961 as the Republic of China. It has been shut out ever since, and its request to attend the 2016 General Assembly as an observer was turned down.

In 2007 Interpol made its first public appeal, to name a suspect whose face in photos had been hidden by what?

A digital swirl had been applied to the pictures, but police specialists managed to reverse it. Within hours of the appeal the public had named the man, and he was arrested in Thailand eleven days later.

Interpol opened a second round-the-clock command centre in 2011 in which South American capital?

Buenos Aires already hosted Interpol's regional bureau for South America, so the new operations room was set up inside it, to share the watch with the original one in France.

Paul Dickopf, elected Interpol's president in 1968, was found to have been an officer in which organisation?

The SS was only part of his secret past: he slipped away to Switzerland during the war and went on to work for American intelligence. He held the Interpol presidency until 1972.

Which former Ukrainian president was placed on Interpol's wanted list in January 2015, then taken off it within months?

Viktor Yanukovych had fled the country in 2014. Interpol listed him at Kyiv's request, then dropped the notice that July after his British lawyers complained that the charges were politically driven.

Interpol issued a wanted notice for Samantha Lewthwaite, widow of a London suicide bomber, known by which nickname?

The White Widow was married to Germaine Lindsay, one of the bombers who attacked London's transport network in July 2005. Kenya asked for the notice, accusing her of involvement in a bomb plot there.