Interpol Silver Notice
All Interpol notices are designed to warn about specific threats and facilitate international cooperation among member states. The broad range of such notices positively impacts the ability to exchange crucial information between 196 countries. This enables member states to be informed about various crimes, specific individuals, and organised groups suspected of committing criminal offences. Although the most common notice is the red notice, it’s also important to explore other types of notices that Interpol might issue.
Combating international crimes by tracing, seizing, and confiscating criminal proceeds has long been part of Interpol’s ambitions. That contributed to the development of Interpol’s Silver Notice to curb money laundering and limit shadow financial transactions. But as with the Interpol red notice, these colour-coded notices might be used unfairly against individuals and other legal entities.
In case of a misuse of such notices, you will need legal support from our team of skilled International lawyers. After all, silver notices can have serious consequences to your freedom of movement to Interpol member countries and other negative consequences to your personal life and property.
What is Silver Notice?
Interpol’s Silver Notice intends to monitor and swiftly recover assets directly linked to criminal activity. As part of its operations, Interpol established an Expert Working Group aimed at reviewing proposals for the exchange and recovery of criminal assets and financial information and the recovery and repatriation of illegal proceeds elsewhere. Consequently, the group is expected to consider the revival of a new notice concept focused on more detailed disclosure and recovery of criminal assets involving illicit financial flows internationally and facts regarding money laundering using various financial schemes.
The idea of creating a Silver Notice first appeared at the 84th INTERPOL General Assembly in Kigali in 2015. This notice was intended to allow INTERPOL to “track offenders, terrorist financiers, and others who are using virtual currencies like Bitcoin to move and store illicit funds, out of the reach of law enforcement and other authorities.” The General Secretariat was tasked with preparing a template, general specifications, and a budget estimate for the development of the new tool by 2016. However, the idea of only notice was not implemented at that time and remained dormant until recent developments.
In 2022, the International Criminal Police Organisation began to make global efforts to focus more on combating financial crime. That led to the establishment of INTERPOL’s Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre (IFCACC) at the 90th General Assembly in New Delhi. Further resolutions were also passed to strengthen the INTERPOL financial crime division, including the creation of the Expert Working Group.
In December 2023, this group recommended the implementation of a pilot scheme to test the Silver Notice. The implementation of this pilot phase also took a major development in July 2024 when Interpol announced that these notices would be in circulation starting from January 2025.
Silver Notice Pilot and Future Implementation
At the 2023 General Assembly, a significant development took place: INTERPOL approved the pilot scheme to test the Silver Notice. This pilot is set to begin in January 2025, following a workshop in Nigeria in July 2024 where high-ranking INTERPOL officials, including Garba Baba Umar (Interpol Vice President of Africa) and Isaac Oginni (Director of IFCACC), spoke on the benefits of the notice.
Umar highlighted that the Silver Notice would tackle money laundering and make it difficult for criminals to conceal their assets, while Oginni announced that this pilot scheme would serve as a key tool in addressing transnational financial crime.
This pilot scheme is expected to test the Silver Notice’s effectiveness in using digital assets crime track global illicit financial flows and recover criminal assets, especially in cases involving virtual currencies.
The Purpose of Interpol’s Silver Notice
The primary purpose of issuing such notice is to further global efforts to ‘track the offenders, terrorist financers and others who are using virtual currencies like bitcoin to move and store illicit funds, out of the reach of law enforcement and other authorities’
They are used to monitor the whereabouts and subsequent movements of individuals who:
- They’re involved in financing terrorism, both internationally and within specific countries.
- They use virtual currency to store and move money that’s been obtained illegally.
The first report on the work of the Expert Working Group was presented in 2023, during the 91st Congress of the General Assembly in Vienna.
Legal Consequences of a Silver Notice
The Silver Notice has all sorts of legal ramifications, depending on how complex the particular crime is.
The suspect could be facing a range of common punishments:
- fine;
- confiscation of illegally obtained funds.
- arrest;
- extradition.
Every serious and imminent threat of legal consequence must correspond to the severity of the serious and imminent threat of the crime committed.
The Abuse of Silver Notices
Like most notices, such as Red Notices, Silver Notices could be vulnerable to abuse. Red Notices, for example, have been used by authoritarian governments to target political opponents and dissidents under the guise of criminal investigations. Similarly, there is a risk that Silver Notices could be exploited to impose financial hardship on individuals through fabricated charges, especially in cases of money laundering where civil or commercial disputes are framed as potential criminal proceedings or offenses.
Given this potential for misuse, INTERPOL will need to apply rigorous scrutiny to the issuance of Silver Notices to prevent them from being used unjustly. The international community will be monitoring this carefully to ensure that the integrity of international requests through the notice system is maintained.
Looking for Legal Assistance With Silver Notice?
The solicitors at Interpol Law Firm specialize in providing expert assistance aimed at swiftly removing various Interpol notices, including removal of red, yellow notice, green, blue, red notice and the United Nations Security Council special notices, among others. Should you require advice from our legal experts regarding a silver notice, we’re ready to offer our support immediately.
If you’ve got outstanding financial issues arising any unresolved financial matters, our solicitors can help to:
- develop legal strategies for each specific case.
- prepare for the upcoming court case.
- prepare for situations where a mundane commercial dispute, a civil case, is used with the aim of fabricating criminal proceedings.
Reach out to our team of experts for professional assistance to minimize the risk of silver alert abuse.
