Interpol chief Ron Noble on what keeps him going and why Singapore was chosen for global complex
Paul Gilfeather 12 February 2011
When Ronald Noble took over as Secretary-General of Interpol, the world’s largest international police force, it only opened on weekdays and closed its doors every evening at 6.
The affable American throws his head back and laughs. “If you had a problem after hours, you just had to wait until the next business day.”
Ten years on and Interpol is firing on all cylinders - a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week operation boasting 188 member countries, all of which are hooked up to its massive database of information.
It assists police forces in its member states, the latest of which is Samoa, in matters of international manhunts, missing persons, high-tech cyber-crime, terrorism and people-trafficking to name but a few.
Mr. Noble’s easy-going nature and laid-back style makes him an unlikely candidate for such a serious job. It’s only when I ask him which “bad guy” he’s most proud of putting behind bars that the smile slowly drains from his face.
Talking to Weekend Today from a suite on the 65th floor of Swissotel Singapore, the former American Secret Service chief reveals: “I helped put in place the largest global manhunt in history for a child sex predator.
“It was the first time Interpol went public and the first time a manhunt had been launched for someone who wasn’t at that time wanted for arrest.
“His name was not known but we had clear evidence that he was repeatedly sexually abusing young boys in South-east Asia in Cambodia and Vietnam, so we went public with the images and asked the media to communicate the information to the world.
“In a matter of 24 hours, we had leads from Canada, Europe and South-east Asia with his name, where he worked and his nationality, and from that within the next 24 hours we had tracked him to South Korea, where he was teaching English to young boys.”
Realising he was wanted, the paedophile fled to Thailand. But he was spotted by airport staff and Interpol again used the media to alert locals.
The Secretary-General adds: “A taxi driver was having dinner at home when he saw the man’s picture on the TV news. He realised his sons had been tour guide for him previously and eventually the oldest boy told his dad what the man had done to him. That guy was arrested and put in jail for six years.
“We did it again a year later with an American man. We didn’t know who he was but, within 48 hours, he was identified, located and arrested, and through that case we actually exposed an international ring of child sex predators.”
This is a prime example of the kind of specific projects Interpol prides itself and Mr. Noble admits that, at times, dealing with such vile crimes can leave him “emotional”. But he says he takes so much from knowing that hundreds of these young victims, sometimes held captive for sex for up to five years, have been freed as a result of a “network of police cooperating via Interpol”.
Mr. Noble, who is in town to oversee the start of work on Interpol’s new Interpol Global Complex in Napier Road, is currently on the trail of one of the most prolific criminal gangs in history.
Known as the “Pink Panthers”, this band of dangerous thieves has stolen jewellery worth more than $350 million in heists from California to Tokyo.
Mr. Noble, 54, whose work takes him away from home for as many as 21 days out of the month, says: “Prior to Interpol getting involved, they were thought to be a European gang. But we connected them to a robbery in Dubai, then Lichtenstein through DNA matching. Then, from that, we established that, from 1990 until now, this group had been involved in 90 robberies worldwide.”
Scores of the gang’s members have already been locked up as a result of Interpol’s police work but several others remain on the organisation’s most wanted list.
He also singles out the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as another example of Interpol’s effectiveness. In this catastrophe, the group helped repatriate literally thousands of bodies with families and loved ones. With unidentified dead turning up all over the world every day, this is an area in which Interpol regularly plays a crucial role.
But Mr. Noble, who became Interpol’s youngest boss at 44 and oversees an annual budget of almost $100 million, is keen to talk about his latest brainchild - the setting up of Interpol’s first global complex in Singapore.
The new operation will be the base for 300 staff and carry out cutting-edge research in the identification of criminals, as well as improve on Interpol’s current capacity to provide round-the-clock operational support across time zones.
The Interpol chief was a visiting professor of law at the National University of Singapore and, knowing the city as he does, was 100-per-cent behind the new centre coming here.
He told Weekend Today: “Coming to Singapore over two years, I was well aware of its benefits, but it was great that Interpol’s General Assembly backed the move unanimously.
“The benefit to Singapore is clear. To host a global complex with state-of-the-art ways of fighting crime is yet another way of keeping your citizens and visitors safe, and I know, reading Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s biography, that security has always been central to the Singapore model for success.
“Also, South-east Asia is where a lot of the legitimate trade and commerce revolves around, so from a business perspective a lot is happening in this region. From Interpol’s perspective coming to Singapore gives us access to a smart, hard-working and well-educated workforce.
“Singapore is a quantum leap forward for us as in staying ahead of the curve as we see the evolution of criminality. Crime is getting more complicated, more global, more diversified so what we want to do as an organisation is stay ahead of that and we wanted a location where the atmosphere is conducive for us to do some of the thinking and research that will enable us to feed back to our member countries and help them.
“Policing by its nature is reactive, but the global threat now requires us to be much more proactive and we believe our presence here will enable us to do that and keep the world safer.”
The new global complex is expected to be up and running by 2013 but Interpol’s main headquarters will remain in Lyon, France.
Incredibly, Mr. Noble has visited 140 countries since becoming Secretary-General and he says this week is typical as he prepares to head off once more. This weekend he is off to Dubai to lead a working party on the “Pink Panthers”.
Next week, he travels to Botswana for a summit on people-trafficking before heading to South Africa to examine how better to police major sporting events in the wake of last summer’s World Cup.
For the Secretary-General, there does not seem to be enough hours in the day. But it is clear his unfeasibly hectic work schedule will continue unabated while he remains at the forefront of international crime-fighting.
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Not enough hours in the day for top cop
Interpol chief Ron Noble on what keeps him going and why Singapore was chosen for global complex
Paul Gilfeather
12 February 2011
When Ronald Noble took over as Secretary-General of Interpol, the world’s largest international police force, it only opened on weekdays and closed its doors every evening at 6.
The affable American throws his head back and laughs. “If you had a problem after hours, you just had to wait until the next business day.”
Ten years on and Interpol is firing on all cylinders - a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week operation boasting 188 member countries, all of which are hooked up to its massive database of information.
It assists police forces in its member states, the latest of which is Samoa, in matters of international manhunts, missing persons, high-tech cyber-crime, terrorism and people-trafficking to name but a few.
Mr. Noble’s easy-going nature and laid-back style makes him an unlikely candidate for such a serious job. It’s only when I ask him which “bad guy” he’s most proud of putting behind bars that the smile slowly drains from his face.
Talking to Weekend Today from a suite on the 65th floor of Swissotel Singapore, the former American Secret Service chief reveals: “I helped put in place the largest global manhunt in history for a child sex predator.
“It was the first time Interpol went public and the first time a manhunt had been launched for someone who wasn’t at that time wanted for arrest.
“His name was not known but we had clear evidence that he was repeatedly sexually abusing young boys in South-east Asia in Cambodia and Vietnam, so we went public with the images and asked the media to communicate the information to the world.
“In a matter of 24 hours, we had leads from Canada, Europe and South-east Asia with his name, where he worked and his nationality, and from that within the next 24 hours we had tracked him to South Korea, where he was teaching English to young boys.”
Realising he was wanted, the paedophile fled to Thailand. But he was spotted by airport staff and Interpol again used the media to alert locals.
The Secretary-General adds: “A taxi driver was having dinner at home when he saw the man’s picture on the TV news. He realised his sons had been tour guide for him previously and eventually the oldest boy told his dad what the man had done to him. That guy was arrested and put in jail for six years.
“We did it again a year later with an American man. We didn’t know who he was but, within 48 hours, he was identified, located and arrested, and through that case we actually exposed an international ring of child sex predators.”
This is a prime example of the kind of specific projects Interpol prides itself and Mr. Noble admits that, at times, dealing with such vile crimes can leave him “emotional”. But he says he takes so much from knowing that hundreds of these young victims, sometimes held captive for sex for up to five years, have been freed as a result of a “network of police cooperating via Interpol”.
Mr. Noble, who is in town to oversee the start of work on Interpol’s new Interpol Global Complex in Napier Road, is currently on the trail of one of the most prolific criminal gangs in history.
Known as the “Pink Panthers”, this band of dangerous thieves has stolen jewellery worth more than $350 million in heists from California to Tokyo.
Mr. Noble, 54, whose work takes him away from home for as many as 21 days out of the month, says: “Prior to Interpol getting involved, they were thought to be a European gang. But we connected them to a robbery in Dubai, then Lichtenstein through DNA matching. Then, from that, we established that, from 1990 until now, this group had been involved in 90 robberies worldwide.”
Scores of the gang’s members have already been locked up as a result of Interpol’s police work but several others remain on the organisation’s most wanted list.
He also singles out the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as another example of Interpol’s effectiveness. In this catastrophe, the group helped repatriate literally thousands of bodies with families and loved ones. With unidentified dead turning up all over the world every day, this is an area in which Interpol regularly plays a crucial role.
But Mr. Noble, who became Interpol’s youngest boss at 44 and oversees an annual budget of almost $100 million, is keen to talk about his latest brainchild - the setting up of Interpol’s first global complex in Singapore.
The new operation will be the base for 300 staff and carry out cutting-edge research in the identification of criminals, as well as improve on Interpol’s current capacity to provide round-the-clock operational support across time zones.
The Interpol chief was a visiting professor of law at the National University of Singapore and, knowing the city as he does, was 100-per-cent behind the new centre coming here.
He told Weekend Today: “Coming to Singapore over two years, I was well aware of its benefits, but it was great that Interpol’s General Assembly backed the move unanimously.
“The benefit to Singapore is clear. To host a global complex with state-of-the-art ways of fighting crime is yet another way of keeping your citizens and visitors safe, and I know, reading Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s biography, that security has always been central to the Singapore model for success.
“Also, South-east Asia is where a lot of the legitimate trade and commerce revolves around, so from a business perspective a lot is happening in this region. From Interpol’s perspective coming to Singapore gives us access to a smart, hard-working and well-educated workforce.
“Singapore is a quantum leap forward for us as in staying ahead of the curve as we see the evolution of criminality. Crime is getting more complicated, more global, more diversified so what we want to do as an organisation is stay ahead of that and we wanted a location where the atmosphere is conducive for us to do some of the thinking and research that will enable us to feed back to our member countries and help them.
“Policing by its nature is reactive, but the global threat now requires us to be much more proactive and we believe our presence here will enable us to do that and keep the world safer.”
The new global complex is expected to be up and running by 2013 but Interpol’s main headquarters will remain in Lyon, France.
Incredibly, Mr. Noble has visited 140 countries since becoming Secretary-General and he says this week is typical as he prepares to head off once more. This weekend he is off to Dubai to lead a working party on the “Pink Panthers”.
Next week, he travels to Botswana for a summit on people-trafficking before heading to South Africa to examine how better to police major sporting events in the wake of last summer’s World Cup.
For the Secretary-General, there does not seem to be enough hours in the day. But it is clear his unfeasibly hectic work schedule will continue unabated while he remains at the forefront of international crime-fighting.
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