What a Red Notice is and how it works

A Red Notice is an INTERPOL request to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition. It is important to understand: this is not an international arrest warrant. INTERPOL cannot arrest people, and each country decides on detention under its own law.

The notice is published at the request of the initiating country through its National Central Bureau, provided the request complies with INTERPOL's Constitution.

A Red Notice can restrict international travel, lead to detention at borders, denied entry and visa problems. During compliance checks, banks may refuse service or freeze operations.

At the same time, a notice is not proof of guilt — the presumption of innocence applies.

Flying with an active Red Notice carries a risk of detention, especially during layovers in third countries. Such a decision should be made only after an individual legal assessment of the route and the data.

A notice can be challenged through the independent Commission for the Control of Files (CCF). Grounds include the political character of the case, human-rights violations, inaccurate data, expired time limits and lack of dual criminality.

A conscientious specialist does not guarantee deletion but builds a sound position and improves the chances.

For people from Russia and the CIS, Red Notices are far from rare: a large share of cases involve economic charges (fraud, embezzlement, abuse of office). Many such cases trace back to a corporate conflict, a hostile takeover or pressure on a business — which is itself a ground for a challenge under Article 3 of INTERPOL's Constitution banning politically motivated requests.

A typical scenario: a person has long lived in Europe, the UAE, Türkiye or Kazakhstan and learns about the notice when renewing a residence permit, opening an account or at passport control. Even without a real extradition risk, the notice complicates life — banks close accounts during compliance reviews and migration authorities suspend statuses.

Many countries now refuse extradition to the requesting state on human-rights grounds, yet the notice itself stays active in every jurisdiction until the CCF deletes it. The working strategy is therefore usually twofold: defending against extradition where you live while challenging the data in INTERPOL's systems in parallel.