On 10 January 2025, Interpol published its first Silver Notice. That notice was a request from Italy seeking information on assets that it believes belong to a senior member of an Italian organised crime group. No further details of the notice were published and, like the majority of Interpol's other colours of notice, will remain confidential.
What is an Interpol Silver Notice?
Interpol is often criticised for moving very slowly - that adage holds true when talking about Silver Notices. While much has been made about this being a new tool in Interpol's armoury, it has in fact been a long time coming. Financial crime and corruption has been an official priority area for Interpol since the mid-2000s, and the idea of a special notice for financial crime can be traced back to 2015 when the General Assembly first decided to create the Silver Notice. The implementation of that decision took a further eight years to complete and it wasn't until Interpol met at its 91st session in Vienna, its centenary meeting, that it approved a pilot period aimed at testing the Silver Notice and diffusion for a period of up to two years.
Silver Notices are for the purposes of:
- locating assets;
- identifying assets;
- obtaining information about assets; or
- monitoring assets discreetly and/or continuously.
While in its pilot phase, the notices are limited to non-coercive measures such as requesting and sharing information with a view to follow-up bilaterial cooperation.
What are Silver Notices going to achieve?
In the last 20 years the scope of financial crime has become increasingly trans-national.
The increased globalisation of banking has made it easier to relocate assets through multiple foreign jurisdictions, and make it almost impossible to identify that they are derived from the proceeds of crime in another country. Much of the illicit wealth of Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha ended up in UK banks, while Riggs Bank in Washington DC held millions of dollars belonging to former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet and President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea. Domestic law enforcement agencies around the world are increasingly stretched in terms of funding and resources so cannot conduct ongoing international asset tracing on their own.
To coordinate the seizure of proceeds of crime there has to be extensive international cooperation, but this cooperation can be very slow. For example, in 2014 the US District of Columbia ordered the forfeiture of approximately $500 million located in accounts around the world, traceable to money laundering involving the proceeds of General Abacha’s corruption. It wasn't until 2020 that $311 million was repatriated to the Federal Government of Nigeria, and it took a further two years to repatriate an additional $20.6 million.
This is where the Silver Notice comes in. Whereas formal Mutual Legal Assistance requests ('MLAs') need to be made on a country by country basis, which means that the requesting state needs to know where the asset is located, this is not always possible in a complex money laundering investigation. Notices and diffusions on the other hand are circulated almost immediately to the National Central Bureaus ('NCBs') of all 196 member countries, who can carry out enquiries that may fill in the gaps in the requesting member country's investigation. The Silver Notice system will allow for a rapid and virtually worldwide request for information that simply isn't possible using MLA requests.
What are the incentives for providing assistance?
Interpol was founded on the principle of promoting cooperation between police authorities around the world, the basis for which is reciprocity. Notices rely on the willingness of member countries to lend assistance and expend resources on the basis that they will receive the same level of cooperation when needed. The Silver Notice stays true to that founding principle of reciprocity, while also reflecting the modern era of international financial crime. What is unique about the Silver Notice, however, is that there is a significant financial incentive to lend assistance.
The pilot phase of Silver Notices limits their use to non-coercive measures such as requesting and sharing information. The interesting part is what will happen after assets have been identified.
To take an example, if assets subject to a Silver Notice issued by an EU member country relating to a criminal confiscation order are located in the UK, the next steps would be governed by bilateral cooperation - in this case that is likely to be the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Title 11 of this Agreement governs the UK and EU member states' cooperation in investigations and proceedings aimed at the confiscation of property in criminal matters. This Agreement requires the UK and EU member states to cooperate to the widest extent possible, and a framework for this cooperation is set out in the Agreement. What is significant is that the UK and EU member states have a financial incentive to cooperate. Under Article 667 of the Agreement, if the amount confiscated is equal to or less than EUR 10,000, the amount will become the property of the requested state; if more than EUR 10,000, then the requested state retains 50% of the amount.
This asset sharing agreement is not unique to our relationship with the EU, it features in many other of the UK treaties with other countries.
In a multi-million pound criminal investigation, this can represent significant funds for the UK Treasury when most of the investigative work has already been carried out by a third country.
Advantages of the Silver Notice
The Silver Notice will streamline international cooperation in confiscating the proceeds of crime, and is likely to have the effect of circumventing the often slow and cumbersome MLA provisions. There will no longer be any need to make requests for information on a country by country basis - an administrative burden which almost certainly hindered their use to trace assets abroad. The Silver Notice is far simpler and quicker; we are likely to see it used extensively.
What is also likely is that we will see the UK authorities pay close attention to these notices. With the UK's role as a key financial hub, a significant amount of the assets sought under a Silver Notice could be based in the UK, and the financial incentive to confiscate them after another Interpol member country has carried out all the investigative work is going to be a very attractive proposition.
We are likely to see assets in the UK being responsive to Interpol Silver Notices and subsequently subject to some form of investigatory action. This could be via an unexplained wealth order, account freezing and forfeiture orders, civil recovery orders under Part 5 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, or a criminal confiscation order. The range of possibilities is very wide indeed. Given the international dimension of these investigations, it is imperative that specialist legal advice is obtained. Mishcon de Reya's White Collar Crime and Investigation team have specialists in the field of international criminal law, Interpol and the Proceeds of Crime Act, so are perfectly placed to provide advice on the wide range of issues that will arise out of a Silver Notice.
The Expert Working Group on Asset Tracing and Recovery is due to submit a report on the results of the pilot phase at the 93rd General Assembly, due to take place at the end of 2025 in Morocco. The report is unlikely to be made public, but the financial incentives to promote the quicker confiscation of criminal property means we can anticipate that this report will be overwhelmingly positive about these new notices.