The short answer. A Silver Notice is INTERPOL's newest alert, launched as a pilot on 10 January 2025: a request to member countries to locate, identify and obtain information about "laundered assets including properties, vehicles, financial accounts and businesses" linked to a person under investigation. It does not freeze or seize anything — countries use the information "as a basis for bilateral engagement", including requests for seizure under national law. Its extracts are not published, and it is subject to the same rules, and the same remedies, as a Red Notice.
INTERPOL lists nine kinds of notice. The newest is the one most people have never heard of — and the one most likely to follow a Red Notice.
What it is for
INTERPOL’s announcement describes the purpose: to “help trace and recover criminal assets, combat transnational organized crime and enhance international police cooperation.” The pilot, approved by the General Assembly in 2024, opened with 52 countries and territories, allowed “up to 500 Silver Notices and Silver Diffusions” between them, and ran “at least until November 2025”. Italy requested the first, seeking “information on the assets belonging to a senior member of the mafia.” INTERPOL names fraud, corruption, drug trafficking and environmental crime.
How it has gone
INTERPOL’s own progress report gives the scale: “over 200 Silver requests are now active in the system, seeking to trace a total of USD 2.2 billion”, with “more than 2,500 responses shared by countries” and “over USD 40 million in assets traced or identified”, across “the 81 countries participating in the pilot phase”.
A Red Notice asks where you are. A Silver Notice asks where your money is.
Why a Red Notice subject should care
Three reasons. First, the two travel together: the allegation behind a Red Notice — fraud, embezzlement, “breach of trust” — is exactly the kind that invites an asset-tracing request against the same person. Second, it reaches institutions, not borders: banks and registries answer it, and the account closures described in Can my bank or employer see my Red Notice? can follow without any arrest. Third, it is invisible — “extracts of Silver Notices will not be published on INTERPOL’s website” during the pilot — so, like a diffusion, it is discovered by its effects.
The same rules, the same door
INTERPOL states that “the General Secretariat will review every Silver Notice and Diffusion for compliance with the Organization’s rules prior to its publication or circulation”, including “ensuring they are not used for political purposes, in contravention of Article 3”. A Silver Notice is data in INTERPOL’s system like any other, and Article 29 of the CCF’s Statute gives any person the right to request access, correction or deletion. An access request should ask about every category of data — notices, diffusions, biometrics and Silver requests alike — and a deletion request against a Red Notice built on a private dispute should chase the Silver Notice built on the same story.
Related
- What is an INTERPOL diffusion?
- Can a Red Notice be used in a private dispute?
- Does INTERPOL hold my DNA and fingerprints?
- INTERPOL — INTERPOL publishes first Silver Notice targeting criminal assets, 10 January 2025 — interpol.int
- INTERPOL Spotlight — Silver Notice: multi-million dollar success — interpol.int
- INTERPOL — About Notices — interpol.int
- Constitution of INTERPOL, Article 3 — interpol.int
- Statute of the CCF, Article 29 — interpol.int
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