Cross-border crime-fighting may be quite complicated. Fortunately, INTERPOL has shown itself to be excellent at combating cross-border crimes over the years.

INTERPOL can get and share all the information and data required to make a provisional arrest of an alleged criminal, home or abroad with a single click of a button. In addition, it’s necessary to understand that a non-resident is not subject to the same rules and regulations as a resident. There are no penalties or fines imposed on non-residents if they do not submit the required information and data. Instead, member countries are informed in the form of color-coded notifications.

Of the seven INTERPOL alerts recognized in numerous nations, the red notice is by far the most severe, with unfortunate consequences. In fact, critics have accused Interpol of misusing this alert and blacklisting high-profile people without cause.

What Is A Red Notice, Exactly?

A Red Notice is a lookout notice, a warning to be on the watch for something. It is a note to international police forces across the world asking them to arrest an alleged criminal under their authority. They do this temporary arrest pending surrender, extradition, or some other legal action.

The INTERPOL Red Notice is typically sent at the request of a member country. The suspect’s home country does not have to be this nation. The crime, on the other hand, must have been committed in this nation. Across the world, red notices are treated with great care. It implies that the person in question is a danger to public safety and should be dealt with as such.

The red notice, on the other hand, is not an international arrest warrant. It’s simply a wanted person’s alert. This is because INTERPOL cannot compel law enforcement in any nation to arrest someone who is the subject of a red notice. The legal value a Red Notice has in each country is determined by its government, as well as the authority of its law enforcement agencies to arrest.

Having a red notice placed against you can have serious consequences for your reputation, career, and business. With the appropriate assistance, you may be able to lessen the impact of the red notice.

These are the actions you must take if you receive a red notice:

• Contact the INTERPOL Commission for the Control of Files. You have the right to see any data in INTERPOL’s files that relates to you.
• Contact the country’s judicial authorities to have the notice canceled.
• You can appeal a removal decision if the notice is issued on insufficient grounds. You can ask your data be deleted from INTERPOL’s database if the notification is based in the country where you live.

Red notice – in the instance of issuing an unfunded cheque in bad faith

Many persons were charged or had already been convicted in absentia for ‘’uttering an unfunded cheque in bad faith”, as defined in Article 401 of the UAE Criminal Code when they deposited a bounced cheque.

Many people were shocked to find out, after a surprise arrest in a foreign nation, that they had been sentenced to many years behind bars without having been charged with any crimes.

However, this may be refuted and prevented by producing the following defenses;

1. The defendant has not been charged with a crime; that is, he or she has yet to be accused of any unlawful behavior, and there is no evidence of criminal intent. A company’s financial issues (insolvency) or an individual’s unemployment are common causes for the inability to pay a debt.
2. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Article 21(1), states that no one should be imprisoned solely because they are unable to fulfill a contractual obligation, which includes debt;
3. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has determined that “[…] imprisonment for debt is one of the deprivations of liberty that is per se prohibited.”
4. ‘’No person shall be imprisoned for proven inability to pay a debt or another civil duty. This is article 14 of the Arab Charter of Human Rights: “No one shall be incarcerated for demonstrated inability to repay a debt or fulfill a duty owed to society.”
5. The use of red notices for serious ordinary-law offenses is restricted by the INTERPOL laws, and personal quarrels are excluded unless they were intended to assist in the commission of a serious ordinary-law crime;
6. The mere act of issuing an unfunded cheque is not criminalized in the majority of INTERPOL Member Countries, and most national legal systems have decriminalized a financial inability to pay a debt.
7. In many countries, the crime of “issuing an unfunded cheque” is rarely recognized as a felony and extraditable offense; the lack of dual criminality would prevent most national authorities from seeking extradition or taking similar legal action in response to such a circumstance.
8. The Judiciary of Dubai will be able to apply this new law, as well. The UAE’s Federal Supreme Court has just passed a bill that decriminalizes cases of certain unpaid cheques and reclassifies them as finable misdemeanors, according to official sources.
9. In the UAE, it is no longer a criminal offense to violate Article 401 of the UAE Criminal Code. As per September 27, 2020, Article 401 of the UAE Criminal Code has been repealed. As of January 2, 2022, the new bounced-cheque legislation that is part of the UAE Commercial Transaction Law has been taken into effect.

Bottom line

The UAE legal system has put in place significant measures to decriminalize typical bounced cheque and regular security cheque cases, as well as unfunded cheque instances where no criminal activity can be identified or described.

The court ruled that Articles 401, 402 and 403 of the UAE Criminal Code, which prohibited cheque fraud with bad faith or insufficient funds, were unconstitutional. As a result, cases of bounced cheques have been largely decriminalized and no more red notices from Interpol in this regard

In any case, for a large number of people who have received an INTERPOL alert, the changes in UAE legislation that went into effect on January 2, 2022, are significant. These earlier red notices will be canceled and they will be alleviated as a result of this amendment to the law.