From 13 to 17 January 2025, Europol brought together more than 80 financial experts from around the world, including from the private sector, together with 43 law enforcement agencies from 28 countries and Interpol, to carry out the largest ever operation to seize criminal assets: Project A.S.S.E.T. (Asset Search & Seize Enforcement Taskforce). During the days of the operation, the specialists' knowledge and expertise was pooled in order to establish a new organisational workstream to identify, freeze, and seize criminal assets using all available means. As a result, the project identified the following assets:

• 53 properties, eight of which were valued at €38.5 million;
• Over 220 bank accounts, including one with a balance of US$5.6 million;
• 15 companies, over 20 yachts and luxury vehicles, four of which were valued at over €600,000;
• 83 cryptocurrency addresses and wallets;
• The freezing of €200,000 in cryptocurrencies.

In addition, further investigations resulting from the action days led to the seizure of €27 million in cryptocurrency alone.

Project A.S.S.E.T is an important milestone for Europol's focus on combating all forms of serious international and organised crime by bringing relevant partners together. In this regard, a crucial element of Project A.S.S.E.T. was the participation of financial actors from the private sector, especially organisations from the banking sector and cryptocurrency exchanges. Public-private partnerships between Europol and the financial sector is a priority for the law enforcement agency. In this context, see also the conclusions/recommendations of the PartFin project → B. Vogel and M. Lassalle, "Developing Public-Private Information Sharing to Strengthen the Fight Against Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing", eucrim 4/2023, 384-392.