Nikita Kaluchenkov was arrested and spent three weeks in a Nicosia jail, all because of an alert sent through INTERPOL. Even now, after having had assurances that his records have been deleted from INTERPOL’s central records, he can’t be sure that he might not still face arrest in some countries. https://youtu.be/L1XhtNpfhd8 Nikita Kulachenkov worked for ten years as an investigative accountant, looking into issues such as corporate fraud and money laundering. His problems began when he started working for the Anti Corruption Foundation in Russia. The Anti-Corruption Foundation was established by Alexei Navalny, the leading Russian opposition figure. Two years after starting work with the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Nikita found that a criminal investigation had been brought against him. Nikita was accused, together with another person from the foundation, of stealing an artwork. In fact, the artwork in question was a poster that was left in the street, in a small town outside of Moscow. It was one of many posters that were there, and which generally stay there until people take them or they’re destroyed by the rain. It’s unclear whether there have been other prosecutions against people taking the posters. Despite having written to INTERPOL to warn against any politically motivated request, an INTERPOL diffusion still led to his arrest when travelling to Cyprus, and a three week spell in Nicosia jail. The case shows how even without an INTERPOL Red Notice, some countries are still able to use INTERPOL’s mechanisms against activists. It was a similar diffusion notice that led to Petr Silaev being arrested at gunpoint in Spain. Read about Nikita's story here.

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