The requesting bureau described an organised scheme: a company arranging surrogacy for foreign clients who had no medical need for it, forged documents used to register clients as fathers, births later annulled in court. The applicant said the case was really just commercial surrogacy for single men, undisputed as to paternity. The Commission sided with neither account in full — and deleted the data because the charge itself, human trafficking, could not stand once one specific fact went unchallenged.
Two very different accounts of the same arrangement
The bureau’s account was substantial. It described an organised group that located single men abroad wanting a child, arranged fertility treatment for them despite no medical indication for it, obtained eggs and surrogates, and used forged medical and civil documents — false infertility diagnoses, fabricated details naming a woman as a co-parent who was not actually involved — to have each man registered as a child’s father and to get the children out of the country. The applicant was said to have profited from the arrangement, and courts later annulled the birth and paternity paperwork for a number of the children involved.
The applicant did not deny that a commercial surrogacy operation existed. His position was that commercial surrogacy is lawful where the arrangement took place, that the women who served as surrogates and egg donors had given full and genuine consent, and that the men who left with the children were their actual biological fathers — a fact he supported with a series of national court rulings establishing paternity in each case. On his account, what was being prosecuted was not trafficking but a form of fertility service that some found culturally objectionable because the intended parents were single men rather than couples.
The fact neither side actually disputed
This is the detail the whole decision turns on: asked directly, the requesting bureau did not deny that the men who took the children abroad were their genuine biological fathers. It also did not dispute that commercial surrogacy itself is lawful in the country where the births occurred. What it maintained was that the arrangement violated medical regulations restricting fertility treatment to couples with a genuine fertility need, and that the whole construction was designed to disguise what was really a transaction contrary to public order.
Why that undisputed fact defeated the trafficking charge
Human trafficking, as a legal category, concerns transactions in a person. The Commission reasoned that where the men removing the children from the country were their own undisputed biological fathers, the described conduct did not fit that category, however troubling the method used to arrange it. It noted directly that the acts described by the bureau — falsified documents, disregard of medical procedure, a transaction the bureau itself called contrary to public morals — could well amount to violations of national civil or administrative law. But the applicant had not actually been charged with fraud or document falsification. He had been charged with trafficking, and on the specific facts presented, trafficking was not what the file described.
- INTERPOL’s own rules bar notices for a defined list of offences that different countries treat very differently for cultural, ethical or religious reasons — and offences arising from gestational surrogacy are named on that list specifically.
- A Red Notice, and equally a diffusion, requires a serious ordinary-law crime described with concrete, specific detail linking the person to the charge — the same standard applies to both instruments.
- The Commission does not investigate or weigh evidence; its role was limited to asking whether what the bureau had actually alleged, and actually charged, amounted to trafficking. On the undisputed paternity point, it did not.
- The forged-documents allegation was serious and, on the bureau’s own account, real — but it was not the charge the notice was built on, and the Commission’s review is confined to the offence actually recorded.
Why this is a narrower result than either side’s account suggests
This decision does not establish that the underlying arrangement was lawful, nor that the applicant did nothing wrong — the Commission expressly declined to reach either conclusion, and said the described conduct could well have violated other laws entirely. What it decided was narrower and more technical: charged specifically with trafficking, against a record where paternity itself was never disputed, the notice did not describe a trafficking offence, and the offence category INTERPOL will not process notices for — gestational surrogacy — applied instead.
What this decision teaches
- An undisputed fact can decide a case that looks, on paper, overwhelming. Confirmed biological paternity, on both sides’ own account, was enough to move the whole matter out of the trafficking category regardless of everything else alleged.
- The charge actually filed matters more than the conduct described. Serious allegations of forgery and deception, real as they may have been, could not support a notice built on a trafficking charge that was never actually amended to include them.
- An excluded-offence category is a stronger argument than disputing the facts. The applicant did not need to disprove the bureau’s account of the scheme’s mechanics — he needed to show the charge itself fell into a category INTERPOL has already excluded.
- This result should not be read as validating the underlying arrangement. The Commission was explicit that the same conduct could support other charges under other laws; it decided only that this particular charge, on this particular record, was not compliant.
Based on one of our own files. The countries, the companies, the courts and every name have been removed; the legal reasoning, on both sides, is reproduced as closely as the redaction allows.
If a notice against you uses a serious label for conduct you say is a different, lawful arrangement, identify precisely which specific fact neither side actually disputes — that is usually where a case like this is won or lost. Describe the charge and what the file itself concedes and we will help you find it.
When the charge does not match the conduct
Which offences can never be the subject of a Red Notice?
INTERPOL excludes several categories, including matters of a predominantly political, military, religious or racial character, and specific offences it regards as bound up with differing cultural and behavioural norms, including offences related to gestational surrogacy. Where a case falls into one of these, that is the argument to lead with.
Does it matter if the underlying scheme involved forged documents?
It can be a serious problem in its own right — but only if it is actually part of the charge. Where a notice is built on one specific charge and the file does not describe that specific offence, allegations that might support a different charge do not rescue the one actually filed.
Is a diffusion easier to challenge than a Red Notice on this ground?
No. The Commission applies the same requirements to both. A bureau that circulates a diffusion avoids prior review by the General Secretariat, but not review by the Commission afterwards.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For advice specific to your situation, please consult a qualified lawyer.