(Bloomberg) — Interpol delegates elected South Korean Kim Jong Yang as the new president of the global policing body after international criticism of the possibility…
(Bloomberg) — Interpol delegates elected South Korean Kim Jong Yang as the new president of the global policing body after international criticism of the possibility that rival Russian candidate Aleksander Prokopchuk might get the job.
Kim was selected Wednesday morning in a snap election organized at Interpol’s general assembly in Dubai following the arrest in China of former president Meng Hongwei last month. Interpol didn’t disclose on its website the margin of victory for the South Korean in the election, which was organized on a one country-one vote basis.
The election had become deeply political in recent days as U. S. and other western countries warned that if elected, Prokopchuk, as a high-ranking police official in Russia, could abuse Interpol protocols to harass political opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Yukos Oil Co. founder and Kremlin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent 10 years in a Russian prison, said on Tuesday that Prokopchuk, also head of Interpol in Russia, had violated the agency’s rules by appealing to several nations to issue arrest warrants for him even after the Russian petitions had been rejected.
Russian officials in turn immediately accused the U. S. of interference in a democratic process to ensure Prokopchuk did not get the job.
