The European Union formally signed the Additional Protocol to the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism—commonly known as the Warsaw Convention—during a ceremony in Strasbourg.
Joining the EU as initial signatories were Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Monaco, Montenegro, San Marino, and the United Kingdom.
The event coincided with the 2026 Octopus conference on cybercrime.
The Protocol, adopted by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on 15 May 2026, updates the 2005 Warsaw Convention to address modern, technology-enabled transnational crime.
The updated instrument brings virtual assets and virtual asset service providers explicitly within the scope of cross-border recovery rules.
It modernizes legal and institutional tools for tracing, freezing, seizing, and confiscating proceeds of crime, including digital holdings that can move rapidly across borders and jurisdictions.
Courts gain expanded powers to target assets linked to broader criminal activity—in certain cases without requiring a prior conviction—and to pursue property held by third parties, while preserving protections for good-faith owners.
Authorities may order urgent freezes or seizures without advance notice where necessary to prevent assets from being transferred or hidden.
Financial intelligence units receive strengthened mandates, including improved access to financial and virtual-asset data and the ability to suspend or withhold consent for suspicious crypto transactions.
States must establish dedicated asset recovery and asset management offices equipped for rapid tracing and preservation.
International cooperation is reinforced through expanded information-sharing, joint investigations, and direct contact between recovery offices.
These offices face binding deadlines for responding to foreign requests, including a three-day limit in urgent cases, with the aim of substantially reducing the time needed to act across borders.
Confiscated assets are to be returned with priority to victims or legitimate owners; amounts above €10,000 are generally shared equally among participating states, and parties are encouraged to direct recovered funds toward social or public purposes.
The signing occurs against a backdrop of heightened concern over crypto-related crime, particularly violent physical attacks on holders.
Bitcoin security researcher Jameson Lopp’s public archive of “wrench attacks”—incidents in which individuals are threatened, kidnapped, or assaulted to force transfer of cryptocurrency—has more than doubled to over 700 documented cases.
Researcher Pizza Bitcoiner employed AI-assisted agentic searches across local-language news, court records, and police reports in dozens of countries, surfacing hundreds of previously under-reported or overlooked incidents (including roughly 375 absent from earlier English-language compilations).
The expanded record highlights kidnappings, home invasions, injuries, and fatalities stretching back years, underscoring that physical coercion remains a practical vulnerability even when cryptographic protections are intact.
Signature alone does not bring the Protocol into force; five ratifications, including at least three by Council of Europe member states, are required.
For the EU, further steps include Council conclusion and European Parliament consent, as the instrument is a mixed agreement involving both Union and national competences.
Once operative, the Protocol is intended to make cross-border asset recovery faster and more effective while complementing existing EU frameworks on money laundering and confiscation.
