What Every Commissioner Should Know About Criminal Asset Recovery
Why the Caribbean can’t afford to overlook this opportunity, and how smarter tools and workflows can change everything.
When we talk about crime disruption, we often focus on arrests, seizures, or convictions. But there’s another, often overlooked, metric of success: how much criminal wealth was removed from circulation. For many Caribbean nations, the answer is: not nearly enough.
Despite the introduction of Proceeds of Crime legislation in most jurisdictions, criminal asset identification, recovery, and disposal remains underdeveloped. In some cases, it is still seen as an “extra”, something to consider once a conviction has been secured, rather than a central pillar of the investigation.
This mindset must change.
The Caribbean Challenge: A Systemic Gap in Financial Disruption
In our work across the region, we’ve observed a familiar pattern:
Limited awareness among investigators of how to identify digital or hidden assets
Few if any tools available for crypto tracing, breach data analysis, or offshore profile detection
Minimal coordination between investigators, legal teams, and financial intelligence units (FIUs)
Delays in preservation orders and Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) processes
No clear asset management and disposal workflows, meaning seized funds or property often sit idle and lose value.
The result? Millions in illicit gains remain untouched, even after convictions. And in many cases, offenders continue to benefit from crime while the state shoulders the cost of prosecution.
So What Happens When It Works?
When criminal asset recovery is prioritised and supported with the right strategy, the impact is immediate and measurable:
✅ Investigations gain momentum. Following the money leads to co-conspirators, shell entities, laundering mechanisms, and can collapse networks faster than surveillance or informants alone.
✅ Prosecutors are stronger. Showing benefit from crime often strengthens the case, influences sentencing, and makes cooperation more likely.
✅ Policing is resourced. Seized assets can, under the right frameworks, be reinvested into policing budgets, community projects, infrastructure, or training.
✅ Public trust increases. Communities see direct action on the visible wealth of criminal figures, luxury vehicles, real estate, extravagant spending, and faith in the system improves.
✅ The criminal calculus changes. When proceeds of crime can’t be enjoyed, deterrence improves. Criminals don’t just fear arrest, they fear insolvency.
What’s Needed: A Shift in Mindset & Capability
At Trace, we’re helping police forces and regulators think differently about asset recovery. It starts with embedding the right processes, tools, and training from day one.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
1. OSINT-Driven Asset Discovery
We use advanced open-source intelligence techniques to identify property, accounts, crypto wallets, and businesses connected to persons of interest, before seizure discussions begin.
2. Partner Technologies
Our analysts are supported by cutting-edge tools for breach data analysis, mobile number attribution, crypto tracing, image geo-location, and financial footprinting, all integrated into live casework.
3. FATF-Aligned Workflows
We help map your current processes, identify bottlenecks, and build SOPs that meet FATF expectations, ensuring that investigations are structured for recovery from the outset.
4. Training & Mentorship
It’s not just about tools. We train investigators and FIU staff on how to think like financial criminals — how assets are hidden, moved, and laundered. Then we support them as they apply that knowledge to live cases.
5. Lifecycle Support
From identification to preservation, restraint, confiscation, and eventual disposal, we provide end-to-end guidance, ensuring assets don’t slip through procedural cracks.
The Opportunity: Turn Cost Centres into Value Centres
Every police service worries about cost. But when done right, criminal asset recovery can fund itself, and more.
Imagine if even 10% of identified assets across the Caribbean were successfully recovered, managed, and reinvested. It would equate to millions in public value, funding new officers, training programmes, community policing, and infrastructure, without increasing public spending.
Let’s Make Asset Recovery a Core Metric of Success
We believe it’s time for commissioners, ministers, and investigators to reframe the goal.
Not just catching the criminal, but taking away the reward.
At Trace, we’re ready to help you do just that.
We bring the tools, the team, and the process to turn financial crime into an opportunity for law enforcement leadership.
If you’re interested in seeing how this works in a live case environment, let’s talk.