After Pestrikov had spent almost two years on the wanted list, the CCF ruled that his case was predominantly political. He showed us CCF documents that said the information Russia had provided was "generic and formulaic" and there had been an "inadequate explanation" of the alleged crime. Interpol cancelled the request for Pestrikov's detention.
Interpol only releases very basic data about illegitimate requests for arrests and since 2018 has not revealed which countries are the subject of complaints and inquiries. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess the scale of the problem, but for the first time, the leaked documents reveal a much fuller picture.
One batch of files shared with the BBC contains a list of complaints sent to the CCF.
The data is not complete, but it covers a broad range of countries, and where the nation requesting an arrest is listed, there are more complaints about Russia than anywhere else - this has been the case for the past 11 years.
The files also show that in the past decade, at least 700 people who were wanted by Russia complained to the CCF, and at least 400 of them had their red notices or diffusions overturned - that is more than for any other country, according to the data we received.
"Historically it has been Russia who is one of the main perpetrators of abusive red notices," says British barrister Ben Keith, who has represented many clients wishing to have their names removed from Interpol's wanted lists.
He thinks Interpol has a particular problem with Russia and that the agency's attempts to prevent abuse have not been successful.
He says that he has "a steady flow of clients who are subject to Russian red notices who are either politically connected, or often pro-Ukraine, or alternatively as a result of corporate raiding".
International lawyer Yuriy Nemets, who specialises in Interpol matters and extradition, agrees that Interpol's extra scrutiny of Russia's requests for arrests, introduced after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has not proved effective.
He says he is aware of a number of cases in which Russians opposed to the war "have been targeted for speaking out against what's going on and were charged with financial… or other ordinary crimes and put into the database based on that".
"It's not hard to game the system," he adds.
As well as information on notices and complaints, the Interpol insider also provided the BBC with thousands of messages sent between individual countries via Interpol's messaging system, revealing another, less formal route to trace people abroad.
One message from Moscow to law enforcement agents in Abu Dhabi explained how Interpol had denied a request for a red notice, but that it still wanted help in tracing the subject's whereabouts. This goes against Interpol advice that members should not use its channels in this way.
The leak also contains a message about Armen Aramyan, a journalist who had fled Russia after he was convicted of "engaging minors in dangerous activities" for reporting on student protests that supported the opposition leader Alexei Navalny in January 2021.
Aramyan went to Armenia and then on to Germany. The message from Russia to law enforcement entities in both countries sidestepped the more formal red notice and red diffusion process, and asked for "any useful information" about Aramyan as well as his whereabouts.
The message was sent in February 2023, during the time Russia was under restrictive measures and its messages were being checked before being sent. We can't say for sure whether the message was delivered, but based on the source of the data, the whistleblower believes that it was.
When the BBC showed Aramyan a copy of the message, he said he was shocked but not surprised.
"I don't think they expected that Germany [would] send them my address, my phone number, and extradite me, but if they could at least get some sort of tiny bits of information it would still be valuable for them."
The leak contains other messages in which a foreign law enforcement agency responds to Moscow's request for information. It sent details about the movements of an ally of Navalny, Lyubov Sobol, and high-profile defector Gleb Karakulov. The exchange relating to Karakulov happened after Interpol announced its additional vetting of Moscow.
The BBC also gained access to internal Interpol reports from 2024 and 2025 which show ongoing concern around Russia's activities from senior directors within the organisation.
In one, a senior figure expresses directly to Russian delegates "serious concerns" about the country's "wilful misuse" of Interpol systems, stating that there were instances of "flagrant violations" of Interpol rules.
Despite the extra restrictions on Russia, the reports show that approximately 90% of Russia's requests were still passing initial checks in 2024. And yet, in the same period, the CCF was overturning roughly half of all Russian requests that it received complaints about. This raises questions about whether the measures had been stringent enough.
One report describes how in 2024 Russia attempted to place red diffusions on judges and a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, after the body issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and another government official for their actions in Ukraine. These requests from Moscow were rejected.
Even while concerns about Russia's misuse of Interpol's systems were being expressed inside the organisation, the reports also show that discussions were taking place in 2024 and 2025 about whether to remove additional restrictions on Russian activity.
This seems to have been settled in Moscow's favour. The whistleblower told the BBC that in 2025 Interpol quietly dropped some extra measures against Russia — it is not clear how far this softening may have gone. Despite repeated requests, Interpol said it was not able to comment due to its "strict rules on the processing of data".
The BBC was unable to disclose all the details of the leak to Interpol as doing so could reveal the source. However, when asked about the issues raised in the investigation, Interpol said it was "concerned that a number of the accusations seems to come from a misunderstanding of how Interpol and CCF systems work, or factual errors about data and changes within Interpol's systems".
"It is untrue to say that we prioritise police co-operation over preventing abuse – Interpol follows its constitution that expressly forbids the use of our systems on information that is of a predominantly political, military, religious or racial character."
And in the past, it has said it can do more good to prevent crimes by ensuring that lines of communication remain open.
We asked Russia's ministry of internal affairs for comment, but it did not respond.
Lawyers Yuriy Nemets and Ben Keith agree that Interpol should do more to prevent misuse of its systems. "If countries are found to be significantly and persistently abusing red notices and diffusions, then they should be suspended from the system for a period of time," says Keith.
Otherwise, Igor Pestrikov fears that Russia, "with the push of a button, can enter anything, pin any crime on you - this lets them persecute you further around the world".
( Source:BBC)
