1. The facts
Interpol is rolling out the Silver Notice, a new colour-coded alert that lets any of its 196 member countries ask the others to locate a named criminal's assets: cash, cryptocurrency, cars, real estate and anything else of value. It is the first new notice colour the organisation has introduced in at least twenty years, alongside the better-known Red Notice for wanted persons.
The tool has been trialled since January 2025. Nicholas Court, Interpol's director of task force coordination, told the AP that 82 countries taking part have so far identified at least 36 million euros of criminal assets through it. Full adoption is expected at the general assembly in Hong Kong in November.
The first notice ever circulated was requested by Italy, targeting a senior mafia figure whose wealth was known to sit mostly outside the country. Within days, Brazil answered, having found property, apartments and even livestock held in the criminal's name and in the names of associates. Rome and Brasília are now negotiating the return of those assets.
2. Why it matters: a tool for the layering stage
Police cooperation has always been built around people. A Red Notice says: find this person. There has never been a standardised way to say: find this person's money. That gap sits exactly where laundering does its work, in the second stage, where assets are moved across borders and placed in the names of relatives, nominees and companies. The Brazilian answer to the Italian request is the point: the assets were not in the target's name alone, they were in his associates'. A database query in one country surfaced what a domestic investigation in another never could.
The 36 million euro figure is small. For 82 countries over twenty months, it is close to a rounding error against the scale of global criminal proceeds. Read it as a proof of concept, not a result. What the pilot demonstrates is that the response time is measured in days, and that the information exists in national registries if someone knows to ask.
The limits are equally clear. A Silver Notice locates; it does not freeze, seize or repatriate. Each of those still runs through mutual legal assistance, the slow bilateral channel where asset recovery cases go to die. Italy found the assets in early 2025. It does not have them yet.
3. What to watch
The November vote in Hong Kong. Formal adoption sets the rules: who can request a notice, on what evidentiary standard, and with what safeguards against misuse. Red Notices have a documented history of abuse by authoritarian members against dissidents; a Silver Notice aimed at a businessman's assets is a tempting instrument for the same governments.
Crypto and nominee structures. The Brazilian case involved land and livestock, assets that sit in public registries. Whether the notice performs against wallets, trusts and shell companies in secrecy jurisdictions is the real test.
The Italy-Brazil repatriation. If that first case takes years to close, the 99 percent figure will not move.
Who requests the next hundred. A tool used by wealthy Western police forces against defendants in developing countries is a different thing from one used in both directions.