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Chairman of the Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin has held a meeting with former Secretary-General of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) Ronald Noble.

For Ronald Noble, who was elected Secretary-General of INTERPOL three times and successfully headed the second largest international organization in terms of international representation (after the UN) for 15 years, the visit became the first visit in Russia as a private person. Ex-director of INTERPOL and the Chairman of the Investigative Committee have not only professional relations, but long-standing friendship based on the effective joint work. Having learned that after resignation Mr. Noble established a company that develops and provides safety measures for different areas of life, Mr. Bastrykin noted that there are no former policemen.

Speaking about the experience of the cooperation between the Russia’s Investigative Committee and INTERPOL, Mr. Bastrykin pointed out that the international organization had helped Russian investigators to solve a number of high-profile crimes especially acts of terrorism and corruption. At the same time he expressed some concern about present-time weaker collaboration with Interpol and underlined that despite sanctions and tensions between some of the countries, INTERPOL should stay out of politics. Mr. Noble supported the thought stressing that terrorism, corruption and general crimes are the problems of international scale and not of one separate country and to fight them effectively efforts of all professionals united by Interpol are needed.

During the meeting Mr. Bastrykin said about relations between some of European countries, Russia and the US concerning the work of investigators and stressed the necessity to unite the efforts of professionals from all countries in order to investigate terrorist attacks, transnational and other major crimes. He also pointed out that the Russia’s Investigative Committee has extensive experience of cooperation with a number of law-enforcement agencies in different countries and made an example of the efficient cooperation with law-enforcement in the US, police of Finland, Germany and other countries.

Discussing international possibilities of fighting such worldwide threats as terrorism, corruption and other challenges Mr. Bastrykin said that it was necessary to create an international association of professional investigators who could provide considerable advisory and methodological assistance to national investigative authorities. Mr. Noble actively supported the idea and said that he might take part in such an organization. Mr. Noble who started publishing an internet-newspaper in March, invited Mr. Bastrykin to write an article for it and share experience assuring that the article may be translated in several languages.

At the end of the meeting Mr. Bastrykin awarded Mr. Noble the medal of the Investigative Committee “For Strengthening International Cooperation” noting great contribution made by the ex-director of INTERPOL in countering international crime and in uniting efforts of law-enforcement bodies of the INTERPOL member-states.

Head of Media Relations                                                                                                                                  V.I. Markin