On 10 January 2025, Interpol published its first Silver Notice: a request from Italy seeking information on assets belonging to an individual alleged to be a member of an organised crime group. On 16 January 2025, the agency subsequently released a framework setting out how Silver Notices would be governed.

The role of Silver Notices in enhancing cross-border asset recovery 

Silver Notices have been introduced from the start of this year, with the specific aim of helping Interpol member countries trace and recover criminal assets. They are part of a pilot programme lasting until November 2025 involving 52 of Interpol’s 196 member countries, including the UK, the US and much of Europe (full list below). 

Silver Notices enable Interpol member countries to share alerts and requests for information on assets linked to criminal activity, including fraud, corruption and environmental crime. The notices are therefore likely to be used in the context of economic crimes in particular, providing states with a tool to track not just potential offenders (as with most Interpol notices) but also the proceeds of their criminality. The notices are intended to facilitate bilateral requests for seizure, confiscation or recovery of criminal and potentially criminal assets located in other member countries. 

Specifically, the governing framework states that Silver Notices can be used for the following purposes:

• to locate assets; 
• to identify assets;
• to obtain information about assets; and 
• to monitor assets discreetly and/or continuously.

The framework further states that the notices are limited to “non-coercive” measures for the period of the pilot, and that the sharing of information through the notices must be in order to aid either civil or criminal forfeiture, whether prior to or post-conviction.

The benefit of Silver Notices to participating countries, including the UK, lies in offering an alternative to the notoriously slow and unwieldy existing procedures of mutual legal assistance (MLA), used by countries seeking help from foreign states in the investigation or prosecution of criminal offences with an international element. The Silver Notice procedure is intended to offer a more streamlined method to law enforcement agencies when seeking to recover such criminal assets located abroad. It is notable therefore that Interpol’s National Central Bureau in the UK sits within the National Crime Agency (NCA), an enforcement body that has become increasingly active in economic crime prosecutions involving foreign jurisdictions. We previously blogged on the NCA’s expanding powers and its successful recent prosecution of individuals under the Bribery Act 2010. 

Whilst UK enforcement agencies have become proficient at utilising asset recovery powers – such as the civil powers contained within Part 5 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 – they have struggled to recover assets with an international dimension. According to the UK Government’s own data, in the financial year 2023-2024, the UK successfully recovered £243.3m of assets from confiscation, forfeiture, and civil recovery orders, but only £5.8m of that total was recovered under the category of “international cooperation” via MLA requests, with the UK entitled to around half of the proceeds. Such data illustrates the potential for increased international asset recovery by UK agencies in the event that Silver Notices expedite and smooth the process.

Potential challenges and scrutiny surrounding Silver Notices 

However, the introduction of Silver Notices comes at a difficult time for Interpol, which is facing criticism around the vast proliferation in recent years of Red Notices. Red Notices are used to locate or provisionally arrest suspects internationally and are traditionally the most popular weapon in Interpol’s arsenal for facilitating law enforcement cooperation. Interpol has been forced to defend itself against allegations that Red Notices are being “weaponised” by member state governments in order to pursue political opponents, and such criticism has led to a host of reforms in recent years, including a new statutory footing for the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s files (the CCF), an independent body based in Lyon to which those subject to Interpol notices are able to bring appeals. 

Silver Notices arguably provoke an even greater risk of abuse of the Interpol system than Red Notices, given the inherent difficulty in examining the validity of cases brought for purely economic crimes like fraud, as opposed to, for example, violent crimes where evidence is more easily verifiable by Interpol and the CCF. Interpol has introduced measures to attempt to combat such abuse of the Silver Notice procedure during the pilot phase, by stating that the content of any Silver Notices will not be made publicly available, and imposing a limit of 500 notices which can be issued during the pilot, divided equally amongst the 52 participants. 

Further, the governing framework requires that “sufficient judicial data” regarding the underlying criminality for which the notice is sought be provided by the requesting state, including evidence establishing a link between the criminal activities of the individual and the assets in question. However, such safeguards mostly repeat Interpol’s already existing rules on processing notices. International legal practitioners will be watching closely to see if the new system leads to an immediate increase in cross-border asset recovery efforts, as well as whether it further heightens the controversy around Interpol’s growing role in international law enforcement. 

Full list of participating countries 

The full list of participating countries is: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Burundi, China, Colombia, Congo, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Gabon, Georgia, Gibraltar (UK), Guinea, Hungary, India, Iraq, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Korea (Rep. of), Kuwait, Latvia, Malawi, Malta, Moldova, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Trinidad & Tobago, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe.