Interpol Silver Notice: Asset Tracing and Financial Enforcement

The Interpol Silver Notice is a new notice type launched as a formal pilot programme in January 2025, following approval by INTERPOL’s General Assembly. The Silver Notice enables member countries to request information about assets owned, held, or controlled by individuals who are subject to criminal proceedings — specifically for the purpose of cross-border asset tracing and recovery. Unlike Red Notices, which request provisional arrest, Silver Notices request financial intelligence: the identification of assets that can then be targeted for freezing and seizure through domestic legal procedures in the jurisdiction where they are located.

The pilot involved 52 participating jurisdictions, including major financial centres: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Georgia, India, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, UAE, UK, US, and others. By November 2025, 133 Silver Notices and 35 associated Diffusions had been issued by 39 countries, targeting assets linked to financial crimes including fraud, corruption, drug trafficking, money laundering, environmental crime, and organised crime activities. The suspected financial harm targeted exceeded €30 billion across all active notices.

A requesting country submits a Silver Notice application to INTERPOL’s General Secretariat, which reviews it for legal compliance and safeguards. The application must relate to an individual subject to criminal proceedings and must contain sufficient information to identify the assets being sought. INTERPOL’s financial crime unit — the IFCACC — and legal specialists review applications before approval and circulation.

Once issued, the Silver Notice circulates to all 196 member country NCBs, not just the 52 pilot participants. All member states are required to check their records upon receipt, even if they are not pilot members. Recipient NCBs that identify assets — financial accounts, real property, vehicles, corporate shareholdings, cryptocurrency holdings — notify the requesting country with details of what has been found and outline the domestic legal procedures available for further action.

The Silver Notice itself does not freeze assets. Asset freezing requires separate legal proceedings in each jurisdiction where assets are located — typically a mutual legal assistance request from the requesting state to the jurisdiction holding the assets, followed by a domestic court application. The Silver Notice provides the intelligence that enables these proceedings to be initiated rapidly and in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. This is its core operational value: coordinated, rapid asset identification ahead of formal legal freezing requests.

In jurisdictions with fast-track asset freezing procedures, the timeline from Silver Notice to asset freeze can be remarkably short. In the UK, Italy, and other jurisdictions with expedited financial crime asset preservation mechanisms, freezing applications can be filed within days of a positive identification response. The Silver Notice thus addresses one of the persistent challenges in cross-border asset recovery: the gap between identifying that assets exist and obtaining a legal order to preserve them before they are moved or dissipated.

Italy’s first Silver Notice in January 2025 located approximately €1.7 million in assets linked to organised crime in Brazil — including cash, real estate, vehicles, and livestock — within weeks of issue. UK notices under the pilot targeted proceeds of property fraud using powers under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. These early results demonstrate the notice’s practical effectiveness in moving from identification to preservation within operational timeframes.

A Silver Notice indicates that the requesting state has criminal proceedings sufficiently advanced to seek international asset identification cooperation. This means criminal charges are either filed or imminent, and that the requesting state is building an asset recovery case in parallel with the criminal prosecution. An individual subject to a Silver Notice faces simultaneous legal pressure in multiple dimensions: the criminal proceedings in the requesting state; potential asset freezing applications in multiple jurisdictions where assets are located; and the Interpol process itself.

The speed of the Silver Notice mechanism means that legal action must be initiated immediately upon becoming aware of a notice. An individual who waits for asset freezing applications to be filed in individual jurisdictions before engaging legal representation has lost significant strategic options. Early engagement — before freezing orders are sought — allows for challenge of the notice through the CCF process, preparation of responses to MLA requests in relevant jurisdictions, and protection of legitimately held assets from overreaching enforcement action.

Silver Notices are subject to CCF oversight on the same basis as all INTERPOL data. The CCF applies its standard substantive rules: the notice must relate to a genuine criminal matter; the underlying proceedings must not be politically motivated; the information must be accurate; and the notice must comply with INTERPOL’s Constitution and Rules on the Processing of Data. A Silver Notice that fails these standards can be challenged and deleted through the CCF process.

A successful CCF challenge deletes the notice from INTERPOL’s databases and requires notification to all recipient NCBs. This removes the international intelligence-sharing mechanism that enables simultaneous multi-jurisdiction asset identification. It does not automatically undo domestic proceedings that were already initiated based on information obtained before deletion, but it removes the ongoing basis for further international cooperation under the notice. Contact our team for urgent advice on Silver Notice cases. See also our guidance on CCF challenges and Red Notice removal.