He signed a post-dated cheque as a company representative, and it could not be honoured. No one explained how that amounted to a crime rather than a breach of contract, and the requesting bureau added nothing beyond what the notice already said. The Commission found the minimum criteria for a Red Notice unmet.
What was, and was not, in the file
The applicant said the dispute was between private companies and that he was not personally involved beyond signing cheques on his company’s behalf; when part of the underlying contracts was cancelled, one company had submitted a cheque it knew was no longer valid. The requesting bureau confirmed the proceedings were valid and explained how notification is handled locally when a defendant’s address is unknown — but supplied nothing further about the context of the case or an answer to the applicant’s account.
The three missing links
Rules on Red Notices bar their use for private matters and administrative violations, and require enough information to show effective personal participation in a criminal offence. The Commission found three specific gaps, laid out almost as a checklist:
- The circumstances and purpose of signing the cheque, and of its later presentation for payment, were never clearly explained.
- There was no account of how the applicant would have signed the cheque knowing it could not be honoured.
- There was no account of how signing a cheque on behalf of his company, without more, amounted to fraud or any other criminal offence.
Absent those links, what remained was a company representative’s signature on a financial instrument that later failed — which the Commission held was a commercial dispute, not a criminal offence, and insufficient to meet the minimum criteria under Article 83(1)(a)(i).
Reading this alongside other cheque and debt cases
This decision belongs to a small family of cases in the catalogue built on unpaid financial instruments — cheques, loans, guarantees — and the pattern across them is consistent: a bureau that merely restates the notice, without describing intent, knowledge or a specific deceptive act, has not met its burden. Anyone facing a notice built on a bounced cheque or a debt should ask, precisely, what the file says about intent at the moment the instrument was signed, since that is the fact the Commission looks for and, here, did not find.
The family of financial-instrument cases, and how to read your own file against it
This decision sits alongside similar ones built on unpaid debts, dishonoured guarantees and disputed loans, and the reasoning is consistent enough across them to describe as settled practice. What separates a criminal case from a commercial failure is never the amount of money or the fact that someone was left unpaid — it is a specific, described act of deception at a specific moment, aimed at a specific person.
The practical exercise is to read the file and ask exactly when the alleged deception is supposed to have occurred: at signing, at presentation, or never at all. If the file only describes the sequence of events — a cheque was signed, it did not clear, a complaint followed — without locating a moment of dishonesty within that sequence, it has the same structure as this one, and the same result should follow.
Decision extract published by INTERPOL · catalogue reference ccf-2017-04 · 2017 · Red Notice · data deleted. Read the full extract (PDF). Source: interpol.int. Names, countries and dates are redacted in the published extract.
If your notice is built on a cheque or a financial instrument that failed, the question to answer is what, if anything, the file says about your state of mind when you signed it. Send us the notice and any contract behind it and we will tell you whether that link exists.
Bounced cheques and Red Notices
Can an unpaid or dishonoured cheque justify a Red Notice?
Only if the file shows more than the fact that the cheque failed. Signing on behalf of a company, without an explanation of fraudulent intent or knowledge that funds were insufficient, has been held to leave the matter a commercial dispute rather than a crime.
What is the bureau actually required to show?
That the person knew the cheque could not be honoured, or otherwise acted with criminal intent, and that this conduct is distinct from an ordinary contractual failure. A bureau that only repeats the notice’s wording has not shown this.
Does it matter that I signed as a company representative rather than personally?
It can. Where the signature was made in a representative capacity and the underlying dispute is between the companies, the absence of any allegation of personal deceit weakens the case for treating it as criminal.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For advice specific to your situation, please consult a qualified lawyer.