Clients frequently ask how much time they have from the moment a court made a decision to arrest or sentence them in absentia, until INTERPOL becomes aware of them.
In an attempt to answer this question, we have prepared some statistics for different countries. These data are taken from cases in which we participated and had access to INTERPOL documents. It should be noted, each INTERPOL file contains information about the date of the request for the publication of the red notice and the date of publication of the data in the system. Therefore, the following table is offered to your attention.
| Requested country | Data of arrest warrant / sentence | Request for data publication | Data of publication INTERPOL red notice |
| Belarus | 12.08.2016 | 22.12.2017 | 28.12.2017 |
| Kenia | 26.07.2021 | 03.09.2021 | 15.11.2021 |
| Russia | 25.09.2012 | 08.02.2016 | 09.02.2016 |
| Russia | 08.07.2019 | 22.11.2019 | 16.07.2020 |
| Ukraine | 01.09.2022 | 02.01.2023 | 22.09.2023 |
| USA | 27.11.2012 | 10.04.2015 | 13.04.2015 |
| Kuwait | 08.04.2014 | 08.02.2021 | 19.02.2021 |
| Germany | 15.05.2020 | 15.06.2020 | 16.06.2020 |
| Iran | 23.01.2023 | 22.03.2023 | 15.05.2023 |
| Moldova | 29.12.2015 | 29.02.2016 | 29.03.2016 |
Therefore, we can make some summaries from this information. First of all, this is the time period from the date a country submits a request to the Interpol Information system (IIS) for the publication of data, until they are recorded by the INTERPOL General Secretariat (IPGS).
As we can see, the fastest processing was for requests from Russia and Germany (1 day), but on the other case Russia (233 days), the United States (3 days), and Belarus (6 days), Kuwait (11 days), Moldova (30 days), Iran (54), Kenia (71 days), Ukraine (263 days).
However, it is difficult to understand what factors affect the speed of data processing and its publication in the INTERPOL system.
In addition, we can observe the period of time between the date of issue of the arrest warrant or the date of the court sentence and the date when the Interpol National Central Bureau (Interpol NCB) of the relevant country submits a request to the INTERPOL General Secretariat for the publication of a red notice.
This table shows a very different time period: Belarus for more than 1 year, Kenya and Iran – 2 months, Ukraine – 4 months, Russia – 4 months in one case and more than 3 years in the other, the United States for more than 2 years, Germany – 1 month, and Kuwait for more than 6 years. So, the extremely different time does not allow us to give a clear answer to the question of how long it takes. I think it depends on the effectiveness of the national law enforcement agencies and the tasks that are set in each particular case.
