Interpol has recently published its first Silver Notice to identify and trace assets owned by a senior member of the mafia at the request of Italian authorities.

The creation of such Silver Notices is a positive step that has the potential to reinforce one of the weakest aspects of the asset recovery process: the detection of illicit financial flows.

What is the Silver Notice?

Interpol Notices are international requests for cooperation or alerts used by police in member countries to share crime-related information. The Notices are colour coded according to category. Red notices, for example, operate as requests to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person. 

The newly launched Silver Notice can be used to request information on assets linked to criminal activities, including properties, vehicles, financial accounts and businesses. According to Interpol,

“countries may subsequently use such information as a basis for bilateral engagement, including requests for seizure, confiscation or recovery of assets, subject to national laws”.

Therefore, it aims to improve the exchange of information in cross-border asset recovery investigations. This will potentially facilitate the detection of proceeds of crime that may have been moved or acquired outside of an investigating jurisdiction.

What is the background and framework of the Silver Notice?

The concept has been over a decade in the making. While Interpol’s General Assembly decided to create the Silver Notice already in 2015, it only approved the launch of the pilot phase of the project in 2023 and tasked its Expert Working Group on Asset Tracing and Recovery with designing the pilot’s scope, format, conditions and safeguard measures.

The pilot phase of the project will run at least until November 2025 and involves 52 countries and territories.

Why does this matter?

The creation of the Silver Notice is rooted within Interpol’s wider efforts to strengthen global asset recovery processes and combat transnational organised crime.

It creates another tool in law enforcement’s toolbox to enhance asset recovery efforts for tracing, identifying and recovering criminal assets related to organised and serious crime.

While it remains to be seen how effective Silver Notices will be in aiding live cases, ideally such notices will:

• improve information sharing between law enforcement agencies;
• provide a systematic approach to the identification and recovery of concealed assets across jurisdictions; and
• bolster international cooperation more generally.

Overall, this new tool has the potential to strengthen the asset recovery process, particularly in terms of detecting criminal assets that may have been laundered internationally.