Interpol's first Silver Notice: Increasing global law enforcement cooperation to facilitate international asset recoveries

Previously, where a country needed assistance from law enforcement in another jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute criminal offences, it would have to go through the notoriously slow and often fruitless process of issuing a mutual legal assistance request. Interpol aims to change that with its new Silver Notices.

Silver Notices are touted by Interpol as a new tool to help to recover criminal assets, combat transnational organized crime, and enhance international police cooperation by enabling member countries to request information on assets linked to criminal activities. The pilot phase opened at the start of 2025. 

As with Interpol's other Notices, member countries may choose to share a Notice with all 196 Interpol member countries, or may direct a Diffusion to selected relevant countries. In the pilot phase, which is expected to last until November 2025, up to 500 Silver Notices can be issued, divided equally among the 52 participating member countries. Interpol will not publish extracts of Silver Notices on its website during the pilot phase and the Notices are currently limited to "non-coercive" measures only.

The first Silver Notice was announced on 10 January 2025: a request by Italy for information on assets belonging to a senior mafia member. Interpol released a legal framework for the governance of Silver Notices and Diffusions on 16 January 2025, which identified the four purposes for which they can be used: to locate assets, to identify assets, to obtain information about assets, or to monitor assets discreetly and/or continuously.

Silver Notices can be issued when a person is subject to a criminal investigation relating to a serious crime punishable by at least four years' imprisonment. As there is no requirement for the individual to have first been convicted, it is possible that Silver Notices could be weaponized by some member states to target political dissidents and anti-government activists, in contravention of Article 3 of Interpol's Constitution.

This has been a frequent criticism in relation to Red Notices, Interpol's system for member countries to request law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest individuals with a view to extradition. There have been cases in which international political activists have been subject to repeated attempts by a member country to use Red Notices as a means of stopping their activities and obtaining their extradition. Although Interpol has publicly and robustly rejected some of these cases, it is not known how many other attempts at political persecution via the Red Notice system have been successful.

As with other categories of Notices and Diffusions, the General Secretariat will review each requested Silver Notice and Diffusion for compliance with Interpol's rules before publication or circulation. Whether this prevents politically motivated Silver Notices from slipping through the cracks, however, remains to be seen. The Red Notices system has also been criticized in the past for its lack of transparency (although there are signs of improvement): not all Notices are published online, meaning the subject of a Notice may not be aware of it until they are stopped and arrested. Similarly, challenging a Red Notice has proven to be a long, difficult and uncertain process, and there is little reason at the moment to believe the system of Silver Notices will be different.

Interpol's next steps during this pilot phase and beyond will be scrutinized closely and any suggestion of weaponization of Silver Notices is likely to lead to increased controversy and criticism for the organization.

The member countries participating in the pilot phase are 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.

Phil Taylor (White & Case, Professional Support Lawyer, London) contributed to the development of this publication.

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