Launched 2025 · Pilot in 52 jurisdictions

INTERPOL · Silver Notice · Asset Recovery · CCF

When your assets
become the target

A new INTERPOL tool can freeze your money, property, and accounts across the world — before you even know it has been used against you. Here is what it is, how it works, and what you can do.

What is INTERPOL?

The world's police network — and its watchdog

INTERPOL connects law enforcement agencies across 196 countries. It does not arrest anyone itself — but it circulates alerts, called notices, that prompt member states to act. A single notice can restrict where you travel, freeze your bank accounts, and follow you across borders.

The CCF — the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL's Files — is the independent body that keeps INTERPOL in check. If a notice has been issued against you unlawfully, the CCF is the forum where you challenge it. It can order a notice to be deleted, corrected, or blocked.

How a CCF Challenge Works
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Notice issued against youA country files a notice with INTERPOL
↓
⚠️
Consequences followArrest risk, travel bans, asset freezes
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CCF challenge filedWe file a request for review and deletion
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✅
Notice deleted or blockedYou are removed from INTERPOL's records
Launched November 2023 INTERPOL Silver Notice
Silver Notice — New Frontier

The notice that follows your money

Every other INTERPOL notice is about finding a person. The Silver Notice is different. It was created to find and recover assets — bank accounts, property, corporate holdings, cash — that a government claims are connected to crime. It can be used against you without your knowledge, before any court has found you guilty of anything.

How a Silver Notice moves against your assets
🏛️
Country AOpens money laundering investigation
→
Silver Notice filed
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INTERPOLCirculates notice to 196 countries
→
Asset data shared
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Country B, C, D…Locate & freeze your assets
→
Without your knowledge
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Your accounts frozenBefore any court verdict
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It moves fast

A Silver Notice triggers asset tracing across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously — often faster than you can instruct lawyers in each country. Criminal funds are moved in hours; enforcement must move faster.

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It reaches everywhere

52 jurisdictions across all INTERPOL regions participated in the 2025 pilot. Accounts in Dubai, London, Singapore, or Geneva — and cryptocurrency wallets anywhere in the world — are all within reach.

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Guilt is not required

A Silver Notice can be issued during a criminal investigation — before any conviction, and before you have been charged. The predicate requirement is a criminal investigation, not a verdict.

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But it can be challenged

The CCF — INTERPOL's independent supervisory body — has jurisdiction over Silver Notices just as it does over Red Notices. Where the predicate proceedings are flawed, politically motivated, or procedurally defective, the notice is vulnerable.

The 2025 Pilot

Scale and reach of the programme

INTERPOL launched the Silver Notice as a pilot in January 2025, involving 52 jurisdictions across all five INTERPOL regions — the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and the South Pacific, and the Middle East and North Africa. By November 2025, 39 countries had issued 133 Silver Notices and 35 Diffusions, linked to suspected financial harm exceeding EUR 30 billion. At the 93rd General Assembly in Marrakech, delegates approved extension of the pilot to additional jurisdictions.

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52 participating jurisdictions

Across all INTERPOL regions, covering the world's principal financial centres and asset-holding jurisdictions.

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133 Silver Notices issued

As of November 2025, with 35 additional Diffusions circulated — all non-coercive intelligence instruments at this stage of the pilot.

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EUR 30 billion+

Estimated financial harm linked to the subjects of Silver Notices issued in the pilot's first year. Silver Notice extracts are not published on INTERPOL's public website.

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Pilot extension approved

The 93rd INTERPOL General Assembly approved expansion of the pilot in November 2025. Broader participation increases the geographic reach of asset tracing requests.

Digital Assets — Within Scope

Silver Notices and cryptocurrency

The Silver Notice is not limited to bank accounts and real estate. Under the legal framework governing the 2025 pilot, it explicitly covers digital assets — including cryptocurrency wallets, exchange accounts, and other virtual asset holdings. A Silver Notice can be used to identify the beneficial owner or controller of a crypto wallet and to share intelligence about digital asset holdings across participating jurisdictions.

This matters because virtual assets move faster than any other asset class. The same speed advantage that makes cryptocurrency attractive as a means of moving wealth is precisely what makes the Silver Notice's tracing mechanism significant: it is designed to operate at the pace of digital asset flows rather than at the pace of traditional mutual legal assistance.

Where a Silver Notice targets a client's cryptocurrency holdings, the challenge strategy must engage both the INTERPOL level — contesting the notice before the CCF — and the domestic level in any jurisdiction where assets have been located and where authorities may take further steps to restrain or confiscate them.

Defence Strategy

How to challenge a Silver Notice

The CCF applies to Silver Notices in the same manner as all other INTERPOL notices. A challenge before the CCF can result in deletion, correction, or temporary blocking of the notice. The CCF operates independently of any national court proceedings and its decisions are binding on INTERPOL and its member states.

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Article 3 — political prohibition

INTERPOL's Constitution prohibits notices of a political, military, racial, or religious character. Where the predicate proceedings against a client are politically motivated, this is the primary ground for deletion. The CCF conducts an autonomous assessment of the requesting state's conduct.

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Minimum criteria

A Silver Notice may only be issued where the subject is under active criminal investigation for a serious offence carrying a maximum penalty of at least four years. Where the predicate investigation does not satisfy this threshold — or where no genuine investigation exists — the notice is invalid.

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Insufficient factual link

The legal framework requires a clear connection between the assets identified in the notice and the alleged criminal conduct. Notices that identify assets speculatively, without establishing the required factual nexus between asset and offence, are challengeable on this ground.

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The two-track approach

The most effective challenge combines a CCF submission at the INTERPOL level with simultaneous proceedings in the domestic courts of the jurisdiction whose authorities are moving against the assets. Both tracks must be opened early — before freezing orders are sought and before assets become subject to restraint orders that are difficult to unwind.

Stradalex

This is exactly where we work

Silver Notices do not arise in a vacuum. They are the international extension of a domestic proceeding — a money laundering investigation, a confiscation order, an enforcement action that has decided your assets should be state property. The notice is the mechanism by which that decision chases your wealth across borders — and now, across digital asset networks.

Stradalex has built its practice at this intersection. We understand the financial crime law that generates the predicate allegation. We understand the CCF process that governs the notice. And we understand how to mount a coordinated challenge across both simultaneously — contesting the legitimacy of the underlying proceedings while seeking to block or delete the notice at INTERPOL level.

Our clients are individuals and entities facing the convergence of national enforcement action and international asset recovery machinery. These are high-stakes, fast-moving matters where the wrong response — or a slow one — can mean permanent loss.

If a Silver Notice has been issued, or if a criminal investigation in any jurisdiction creates the realistic risk of one, the time to act is before the asset tracing leads to freezing orders.

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