Law enforcement access to the BIOP

Authorisation is requested by the State's national focal point, which guarantees that the officer belongs to a competent service. It is personal, subject to half a day's training and valid for two years. The officer signs a confidentiality undertaking.

OIMAP does not issue authorisation on the direct request of an officer: going through the focal point ensures that access complies with national rules. A register of authorisations is kept and audited.

Beyond the public record, officers see the detailed circumstances of the theft, procedure references, identified suspicions, links with other cases and investigators' contacts. They can also consult the matches found by operators.

This information may be used only for investigations. Every consultation is recorded with the officer's name, the date and the reason. Misuse is punished by withdrawal of authorisation and disciplinary proceedings.

The BIOP database is synchronised with INTERPOL's database of stolen works of art: the records of each are transmitted to the other, securely. An officer who seizes a work in a partner State can therefore find it without changing tool.

Analysts from the two organisations meet each quarter to deal with complex cases and improve the quality of exchanges. In 2024, this cooperation led to the seizure of 214 objects.

Law enforcement access is protected by two-factor authentication, including a physical token, by encryption of exchanges and by data partitioning. Each year an independent security audit checks the system.

In the event of an incident — loss of a token, attempted intrusion — the BIOP unit immediately deactivates the access concerned and informs the focal point. No major incident has been recorded since it went into service.