A Red Notice can be deleted where the requesting country has not described what you are actually alleged to have done. INTERPOL requires a clear and concrete account of the person’s own role, the specific acts, the timing and the means — not a general label such as “fraud” or a description of what a co-accused did.
What a proper description has to contain
Under Article 83(2)(b) of the Rules on the Processing of Data, the requesting bureau must supply a summary of facts that identifies the individual’s effective participation in the offence. A charge label is not a description.
The burden sits with the requesting bureau. When the Commission puts questions and the bureau does not answer them, the gap is resolved against the notice, not against the applicant.
Where descriptions have failed
The Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files publishes extracts of its decisions. In our reading of the published corpus, 15 decisions turn on this ground, and the data were deleted or blocked in 8 of them. Each decision below links to the full text on our data quality and seriousness page, where the reasoning is set out in detail.
- The description must be concrete. It has to identify the person’s role, the specific criminal actions, the time and the means, and any benefit obtained.
- Describing a co-accused is not enough. Where a bureau described a co-accused’s acts precisely but not the applicant’s, made general statements about the existence of evidence and did not address his submissions, the data were deleted.
- Unanswered questions count. Where a requesting bureau left the Commission’s questions about the applicant’s specific role unanswered, the description failed the test.
How this ground performs in our practice
We argue this ground in most cases, usually alongside others: it appears in 25 decided cases in our record, of which 9 ended in deletion. The 36% is lower than the 53% in the published corpus, and the reason is visible in how the argument is used — as a supporting point in cases whose centre of gravity lies elsewhere, rather than as theprincipal ground.
Where this ground sits in the wider picture is worth knowing before you rely on it. All 65 published decisions, filterable by ground, notice type and outcome, are on the catalogue hub.
The figures above are aggregate. Individual client matters are privileged and are not described here.
What to look for in your own file
- A side-by-side comparison of what the bureau alleges against you and what it alleges against co-accused.
- The precise conduct attributed to you personally — if it cannot be stated in one sentence, that is the argument.
- Whether the summary explains any benefit you are said to have obtained.
- Whether the bureau answered the Commission’s questions, and what it left out.
- This is the ground with the largest gap between the two records: 53% success in the published corpus against 36% in ours, which reflects that we run it most often as a secondary argument rather than a standalone one.
The practical first move is to obtain the text of what the requesting country actually supplied about you. Until you have that, there is nothing concrete to attack. We file access requests for exactly this purpose, and then build the deletion request on what comes back. Tell us what you know so far.
Questions about vague or missing descriptions
Is it enough that the charge is vague?
Vagueness alone is rarely decisive. What succeeds is showing that the summary does not connect you personally to specific acts — that it describes a scheme, or another person’s conduct, and attaches your name to it.
What happens if the requesting country simply does not reply?
That helps you. In the published decisions the Commission has repeatedly treated an unanswered request for clarification as a failure by the bureau to discharge its burden.
Can the country fix the description and re-issue the notice?
It can supply further information while the request is pending, and it can seek a fresh notice later on a proper basis. This is why the other grounds in your case matter: a deletion on description alone is the most reversible outcome.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For advice specific to your situation, please consult a qualified lawyer.