Interpol chief goes missing… Disappearance scenarios

By Shaimaa Hefzi

There are different scenarios for the disappearance of the International Police (Interpol) President, Meng Hongwei, the most likely of which is that the security chief is being held in China for corruption investigations.

China is accused of forcibly holding the high-profile international official, but Beijing anti-corruption drive does not recognize Meng’s international prominence, according to Chinese sources.

Meng Hongwei

When the high-ranking official in China’s public security system was elected president of Interpol in 2016, leaders in Beijing rejoiced, “The New York Times” said. The promotion lent respectability to China’s notoriously opaque and arbitrary criminal justice system.

Meng’s wife said her husband did not disappear in Paris, where the Interpol has its headquarters. She reported him missing after she did not hear from him after his arrival in his native China.

“If so, his sudden and mysterious disappearance threatens to cloud China’s image, demonstrating that even the most prominent official of an international police organization is vulnerable,” the Times stated.

French police sources and justice officials said Meng’s wife, who lived with him and their children in Lyon, south-east France, reported him missing on Friday, October 5, said Britain’s “The Guardian.”

The Interpol said it was aware of the reports but added that it was “a matter for the relevant authorities in France and China.”

 Who is Meng ?

Meng was last seen leaving for China from Interpol’s headquarters on 29 September, a judicial source told Agence-France Presse.

Meng, 64, was formerly China’s deputy minister of public security, a position which critics say gave him control over the country’s secret police. He previously served as director of the coastguard and deputy head of the Chinese state oceanic administration.

The first Chinese head of the Interpol, Meng was elected the organisation’s chief in November 2016.

Why does China hold Meng Hongwei ?

“If Meng Hongwei has disappeared in China, then of course the most likely reason is an anticorruption investigation,” Deng Yuwen, a former editor of a Communist Party journal who now writes commentaries on Chinese politics, said in a telephone interview with “The New York Times.”

“Internationally, he is president of Interpol, but in the eyes of the Chinese authorities, he is first of all Chinese, and they wouldn’t think too much about his international prominence,” Deng added. “This is the new normal.”

The Times noted that since Xi Jinping became head of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he took the drive against graft high into the political elite.

Earlier this year, China established an anticorruption investigation agency with wide powers to secretly detain officials suspected of wrongdoing.

(Nur Bekri (

Not the first

The Interpol chief is not the first Chinese official to disappear that way. Recently, Chinese state media reported that a Chinese actress who had disappeared for four months, had been cooperating with the tax authorities.

An in 2013, Li Dongsheng, another vice minister of public security, was investigated for corruption and was later sentenced to 15 years in prison for taking bribes.

Last month, the Chinese anticorruption agency announced that it was investigating Nur Bekri, one of the few senior Chinese officials from the Uighur ethnic minority.