Silver Notices: a new tool to aid global asset recovery (or a distraction)?
27 January 2025
Dan Hudson, specialist partner and head of white-collar crime at Seladore Legal, explores Interpol’s new Silver Notices, a pilot scheme targeting the tracing and recovery of criminal assets.
Interpol, the international police organisation that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control, is perhaps best known for its use of ‘Red Notices’ issued to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition. This month, Interpol issued its first ever ‘Silver Notice’ targeting the tracing and recovery of assets connected to criminal activities.
Silver Notices are the newest form of alert that Interpol can use, enabling its member countries to request information, broadly or bilaterally, about assets linked to fraud, corruption, and other criminal activities.
Information-sharing between international law enforcement agencies is typically time-consuming and bureaucratic. The system of Silver Notices attempts to brand this information-sharing under an Interpol umbrella in order to ‘grease the wheels’ and make it more efficient.
The Silver scheme is currently being piloted until November 2025 by 52 of Interpol’s 196 member states, including the US, the UK, China, Russia, India, and much of the EU. Whilst details and the format of the notices will remain confidential during the trial, Interpol has confirmed that the first Silver Notice was sought by Italy as it seeks information on assets belonging to a senior mafia member.
To issue a Silver Notice, requesting state agencies must provide Interpol and recipient states with sufficient details of the underlying criminal activities, the link between the person and the assets involved, and reference to a valid judicial decision indicating that the assets are subject to criminal restraint or similar measures in the requesting state.
Where a state locates or identifies relevant criminal assets in response to a Silver Notice, it should (subject to applicable local laws) disclose this information to Interpol and the requesting state, along with any potential steps that may be taken by requesting states in relation to the assets.
For example, in the UK, Silver Notices could enable British authorities to gather information about overseas assets linked to UK fraud cases, potentially subject to confiscation or civil recovery orders under the Proceeds of Crime Act, ultimately benefiting victims of UK fraud. Where criminal assets have been dispersed overseas, UK authorities can seek to restrain or freeze them, subject to mutual legal assistance provisions with the relevant state. Recovery would require securing appropriate UK orders, and in some cases, corresponding convictions or legal actions in the overseas jurisdiction to support enforcement.
Given London’s reputation as a safe haven for assets from associated overseas criminal activity, it is possible that UK agencies will receive significant numbers of inbound requests for information about criminal assets in the UK, sought by overseas state agencies. UK authorities and courts typically look to be cooperative with official foreign requests for assistance, meaning Silver Notices could result in the UK providing more information and support to overseas agencies than it receives in return. If the scheme continues past the pilot stage and sees broad international adoption, it may well divert UK agencies’ time and resources away from domestic investigations to respond to foreign requests relating to overseas crimes and their victims.
It remains to be seen whether the UK will be a net recipient of Silver Notices and how willing the government is to allocate time and resources to address them, particularly as the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) seeks to adopt a more proactive investigatory role. UK criminal enforcement agencies might be better served by focusing on sufficient resourcing and incentives to sharpen and deploy the robust tools already available, including those introduced under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, which broaden criminal liability for senior management misconduct and failures to prevent fraud by associated persons These measures could take precedence over potentially distracting measures being introduced to aimed at bolstering Interpol’s international relevance.
