GMP win national award for recovering cash from criminals and ploughing it back into the community

GMP’s Economic and Cyber Crime Unit (ECCU) has scooped a national award for its work in recovering cash from criminals and redistributing it to good causes in Oldham and beyond.

The team won the ‘Excellence and Innovation in Financial Investigation’ award at the National Police Chiefs' Council Keith Hughes Awards - a national awards programme that recognise outstanding achievements in the field of financial investigation. 

The team was up against seven other teams shortlisted for financial excellence and triumphed for their overall excellent Proceeds of Crime performance throughout the last 12 months where the team successfully confiscated and forfeited over £17.7m. 

That money is ploughed back into community and policing projects through the Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme (ARIS) to fight, prevent and reduce crime; keep people safe; and care for victims. 

Among previous successful bidders were Child Safety Media, who put on the Crucial Crew safety sessions for youngsters in Oldham and across Greater Manchester.  

Over the past 12 months, Child Safety Media have been awarded £45,000 to co-ordinate the sessions attended by around 16,000 children.  

GMP officers helped present the workshops in venues including schools across the force area that looked at issues like personal safety, crime prevention, internet safety, cyber-crime, knife crime, rail safety, anti-social behaviour, crime and its consequences and road safety.  

Another group to benefit from GMP’s ARIS funding was Chadderton Football Club, who successfully applied for £72,000 as part of a larger project to install a new artificial pitch. 

The work is ongoing as police continue to deprive criminals of their ill-gotten gains – this year convicted drug dealer Lee Whiteley was ordered to pay back more than £200,000 and Umair Zaheer, the ringleader of a nationwide drugs and firearms conspiracy, ordered to pay £350,000. 

Det Supt Andy Buckthorpe said: “This award is a fantastic achievement and is well deserved recognition for the work that goes on every day across GMP to target money launderers and strip criminals of cash and assets. 

“In the last financial year, the Economic and Cyber Crime Unit achieved record breaking success seizing, forfeiting and confiscating the ill-gotten gains from criminal across Greater Manchester. 

“This work is only possible because of the drive and determination by force and district teams responding to intelligence and undertaking proactive police work on the front line. Criminals flaunt their wealth within the community, and it is vital that the public sees GMP responding and removing them of the wealth they have gathered through serious organised crime. 

“Using the newly refreshed ARIS process we can use criminal money to reinvest back into local communities for the benefit of the public we serve. I am pleased and proud to see this work formally recognised at a national level.” 

The Keith Hughes Awards recognise the achievements of individuals and teams that have made outstanding contributions to investigating and prosecuting economic crime. 

The awards were established in memory of Detective Constable Keith Hughes, an outstanding financial investigator with the former National Crime Squad, who died of cancer in July 2003. 

Representatives from ECCU attended the awards ceremony in Birmingham on Friday, September 12, 2025.