The International Criminal Police Organization, or INTERPOL, is an intergovernmental organization facilitating international police cooperation. It was established as the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) in 1923 and adopted its telegraphic address as its common name in 1956.
Interpol has an annual budget of around €78 million, most of which is provided through annual contributions by its membership of 190 countries. The organization's headquarters is in Lyon, France. It is the second largest international organization after the United Nations in terms of international representation. In 2013, the Interpol General Secretariat employed a staff of 756, representing 100 member countries. Its current Secretary-General is Jürgen Stock, the former deputy head of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office. He replaced Ronald Noble, a former United States Under Secretary of the Treasury for Enforcement, who stepped down in November 2014 after serving 14 years. Succeeding Khoo Boon Hui, Interpol's current President is former Deputy Central Director of the French Judicial Police Mireille Ballestrazzi.
To keep Interpol as politically neutral as possible, its charter forbids it, at least in theory, from undertaking interventions or activities of a political, military, religious, or racial nature or involving itself in disputes over such matters. Its work focuses primarily on public safety and battling terrorism, crimes against humanity, environmental crime, genocide, war crimes, organized crime, piracy, illicit traffic in works of art, illicit drug production, drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, child pornography, white-collar crime, computer crime, intellectual property crime and corruption.
In the first part of the 20th century, several efforts were taken to formalize international police cooperation, but they initially failed. Among these efforts were the First International Criminal Police Congress in Monaco in 1914, and the International Police Conference in New York in 1922. The Monaco Congress failed because it was organized by legal experts and political officials, not by police professionals, while the New York Conference failed to attract international attention.
In 1923, a new initiative was taken at the International Criminal Police Congress in Vienna where the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) was successfully founded as the direct forerunner of Interpol. Founding members included police officials from Russia, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Poland, China, Egypt, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. The United States did not join Interpol until 1938, although a US police officer unofficially attended the 1923 congress.The United Kingdom joined in 1928.
Following Anschluss in 1938, the organization fell under the control of Nazi Germany, and the Commission's headquarters were eventually moved to Berlin in 1942.From 1938 to 1945, the presidents of Interpol included Otto Steinhäusl, Reinhard Heydrich, Arthur Nebe, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. All were generals in the SS, and Kaltenbrunner was the highest ranking SS officer executed after the Nuremberg Trials.
After the end of World War II in 1945, the organization was revived as the International Criminal Police Organization by officials from Belgium, France, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom. Its new headquarters were established in Saint-Cloud, a suburb of Paris. They remained there until 1989, when they were moved to their present location in Lyon.
Until the 1980s, Interpol did not intervene in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in accordance with Article 3 of its Charter, which prohibited intervention in "political" matters.
In July 2010, former Interpol President Jackie Selebi was found guilty of corruption by the South African High Court in Johannesburg for accepting bribes worth €156,000 from a drug trafficker. After being charged in January 2008, Selebi resigned as president of Interpol and was put on extended leave as National Police Commissioner of South Africa. He was temporarily replaced by Arturo Herrera Verdugo, the National Commissioner of Investigations Police of Chile and former vice president for the American Zone, who remained acting president until October 2008 and the appointment of Khoo Boon Hui.
On 8 November 2012, the 81st General Assembly closed with the election of Deputy Central Director of the French Judicial Police Mireille Ballestrazzi as the new President of the organization. She thus became Interpol's first female president.
| International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL | |
| Common name | Interpol |
| Abbreviation | ICPO |
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| Motto | Connecting police for a safer world |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 7 September 1923 |
| Employees | 756 (2013)[1] |
| Annual budget | €78 million (2013 |
| Legal personality | Governmental: Government agency |
| Jurisdictional structure | |
| International agency | |
| Countries | 190 member countries |
 | |
| Governing body | Interpol General Assembly |
| Constituting instrument | ICPO-INTERPOL Constitution and General Regulations |
| General nature |
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| Operational structure | |
| Headquarters | Lyon, France |
| Agency executives |
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| Facilities | |
| National Central Bureaus | 190 |
| Website | |
| interpol.int | |
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