Police chiefs from 192 nations will vote tomorrow in Dubai on who is next to head Interpol, the international police cooperation organization, and the frontrunner is a Russian major general allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
If selected, Alexander Prokopchuk, "a major general in the Russian Interior Ministry who is one of Interpol’s vice presidents." would mean increased risk for critics and political opponents of Putin worldwide.
In the past, Russia and other countries have been accused of abusing “red notice” alerts on perceived political enemies, leading to their being stopped at airports and detained.
The best known example is Bill Browder, a U.S.-born British financier and Kremlin critic. Browder lobbied Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, named after Browder’s Russian lawyer and friend Sergei Magnitsky, who accused the Russian government of tax fraud and died in prison in 2009. Browder has vowed to avenge Magnitsky’s death. Since then, he has been detained at least seven times in numerous countries while Interpol sought to verify arrest warrants issued by Russia.
Only this week, Russian authorities launched a new criminal investigation into Browder, accusing him of being involved in Magnitsky’s death.
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Four U.S. senators issued a statement Monday likening Prokopchuk’s selection to “putting a fox in charge of a henhouse” and urging police chiefs from the 192 member nations to reject him.
“Russia routinely abuses Interpol for the purpose of settling scores and harassing political opponents, dissidents and journalists,” said the statement, which was signed by senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “Alexander Prokopchuk has been personally involved in this intimidation strategy which ultimately seeks to weaken democratic institutions and empower Putin’s authoritarian regime.”
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, issued a statement calling the senators’ letter an example of “interference in the electoral process” at Interpol. The phrasing appeared to be a slap at U.S. officials and lawmakers who believe Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
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Browder tweeted that “Putin is about to gain control of the world’s main law enforcement organization” and said that the agency would become “an arm of the Russian mafia.”
“I cannot imagine a more inappropriate person than a person who has been the architect of the abuse doled out to me by Russia at Interpol,” Browder said at a news conference in London. “There is probably no more inappropriate person than this person, and there is no more inappropriate country to have any type of leadership position at Interpol than Russia.”
Pressure on Interpol grows as the agency considers making a Russian its chief (WaPo)