 Thank you very much and good day to everybody. Sorry for having been a little late, but we just passed some very important reforms for the organization. But let me start by saying how very pleased I am that we are holding this in-person, general assembly the first time we have brought our membership together since we met 2019 in Santiago de Chile in the Americas. And I'm very grateful to the Turkish authorities for their wonderful hospitality here in Istanbul and for their efforts to make this event also a COVID-19 safe event. We all know that this meeting takes place under the conditions of a pandemic or a challenge in itself. I would also like to welcome the federated states of Micronesia as our newest member country bringing the numbers of member country now to 195. Since the last Interpol General Assembly in 2019 the world has been completely disrupted as we all know by COVID-19. At the same time we have seen a kind of parallel crime pandemic all around the world. Police saw criminals exploiting opportunities to turn the health crisis into an opportunity to make illegal profits. Fake COVID-19 vaccines shipped from one continent to another, a steep increase in online child sexual abuse and especially a surge in cybercrime ransomware, one of the particular examples in some regions the increases amounted to several hundred percent during the crisis. The billions in illicit profits that organized crime networks are making especially in drug trafficking is increasingly infiltrating our societies. I listen carefully of course what chiefs of police from member countries are telling me and they are increasingly concerned that again organized crime with the millions and billions they are making these powerful criminal global enterprises are undermining our societies investing into the legitimate economy and therefore causing a major threat to our societies in almost all our member countries. The only way for law enforcement in our member countries and I mean all of our member countries to combat transnational crime is through international police cooperation. There's already a lot going on but the globalization of crime of terrorism is continuing and the challenge for national police services definitely is to invest more in international police cooperation that costs resources. They need the specialized stuff to cooperate on an international level but this is exactly why Interpol was created for one for almost 100 years to provide that safe and secure platform for police cooperation. Since 2015 Interpol has seen the number of records held in our 19 global databases grew by 69 percent and now contains some 116 million police records. Already this year alone 2021 our databases have been searched nearly three and a half billion times but what we are seeing is still just the tip of the iceberg. Crimes such as fraud or cybercrime are massively unreported for various reasons very often victims of these types of crime are not reporting their illegal activity to law enforcement agencies and the judiciary and many countries that are also represented here in Istanbul simply do not have the technology or the training capabilities to tackle these modern and let's say more old-fashioned crimes that are now appearing also in light of using new technologies in the appropriate way. Interpol is of course uniquely positioned to help our member countries address these issues even where sometimes diplomatic relations between member countries are crucial, difficult or even not existing at all. Interpol's neutrality and independence is essential as Secretary General I'm committed to ensuring we remain an essential and trusted partner indeed the backbone of a global security architecture to tackle these types of crime. This is why this gen assembly will discuss a gradual substantial increase also in our statutory contribution so these amounts of money that we are receiving every single year from our membership to build our secretariat work in a sustainable way. It is also why member countries will be called to approve a set of reforms to our governance that is what we have been discussing this morning and these reforms concern first and foremost the executive committee that is the body that supervises my work and the work of the roughly 1,000 men and women in the general secretariat and the adoption of a code was agreed just before this meeting here took place now introducing a clear set of rules regarding the ethics accountability integrity by its members which means the members of this executive committee. We are and that is important to state also on this occasion here we are a technical police organization we are not a political organization but this does not mean of course that we are blind to today's geopolitical realities which are not always making our work easier. Recently we have seen various commentaries on Interpol most of which unfortunately has been either uninformed or misguided. Let me start with a few words on one of the most well-known but also very effective tools this organization operates the so-called red notices. To first clarify that a red notice is not an arrest warrant. In 2016 I created a specialized task force which reviews every single red notice request from every member country to ensure that it is compliant with our Interpol constitution and the rules of procedure. Why is that important? Because we have a limited mandate. We are not allowed to enter into any issues that have been predominantly a political, a military, a racial or a religious character. Interpol has simply to stay away from these activities. Second the difference between the secretary general and the president. You know that on day three of this conference we have elections for the supervisory body the executive committee which is presided by the president of Interpol. The president of Interpol also presides this general assembly here in Istanbul or any other general assembly. The president of Interpol remains a full-time official of his or hers country where he or she is coming from. The main role is again in executing this supervisory function on behalf of the membership that means normally meeting with the fellow members of the executive committee three times a year doing the sessions of the executive committee and in all the time in between if I may say the person remains a full-time official of the country where he or she comes from. Others is the secretary general. I'm not a member of any government. I'm neutral. I'm independent. And my role is to conduct the day-to-day operations of the Interpol general secretary. So the day-to-day operations of Interpol. So what I sometimes heard in the news that a member of the executive committee is taking over country is taking over Interpol. That doesn't mean at all the reality of the clear governance structure which we have in our organization. We have again today been strengthening that mechanism the system of checks and balances within our organization. But again the person that is running the day-to-day business of Interpol that is the secretary general just to clarify that on the occasion of the elections that are coming up on Thursday. So that concludes my remarks. Maybe just to finalize with the information that in two years from now Interpol is celebrating its centenary. 100 years we were founded in 1923 in Austria in Vienna and during this General Assembly there will also be a vote on the venue where the organization is meeting in 2023. Next year we will be in India 2023. We will hopefully be in Austria. We have a request from the government of Austria to be decided here in Istanbul. And the schedule is already ready for 2024 where we are going to meet in London in the United Kingdom. Just to provide you this overview in terms of the calendar that this General Assembly, our supreme decision-making body is following. So thank you very much. This concludes my introductory remarks.