RECORD £15 MILLION RECOVERED TO BENEFIT POLICING OPERATIONS AND THE COMMUNITIES THAT WE SERVE

Our Economic Crime Unit recovered a record amount of more than £15 million during the tax year that ended last month – and a substantial amount of it will be spent on policing posts, initiatives and operations.

Since April 2022 specialist investigators in the ECU and officers based across our districts have confiscated and forfeited a total of £15,751,210 in criminal finances.

As part of the national Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme (ARIS), some of the funds recovered are returned to GMP to be utilised in furthering asset recovery work, policing operations and funding community initiatives to tackle and prevent crime.

Of the £15.7m recovered, over £5.1m of it will be returned to GMP under the scheme operated by the Home Office.

To put this into context, the average annual ARIS return for the years between 2012 and 2020 was just over £1.9m.

Examples of how ARIS funds have been spent on GMP operations and policing initiatives to prevent and tackle crime in Greater Manchester over the past year include:

• Operation Vulcan has received over £1m in funding from ARIS – the operation created in November 2022 continues to tackle counterfeit stores and organised criminality in Cheetham Hill

• Operation Naseby has received £175,000 to tackle organised crime in Salford

• Operation Sherwood, an investigation into non-recent child sexual exploitation in Oldham, has received £117,000

• Operation AVRO has received £81,000 to promote the operation’s days of action across our districts. The funds recovered this year is made up from:

• Over £8.5m from the Account Freezing Order Team (AFO) – by conducting civil investigations, the team freezes suspected criminal funds in bank accounts, and these are then forfeited at court

• Around £4m from the Asset Detention and Recovery Unit (ADRU), who won the Annual Chief’s Award for Team of the Year in 2021 – the team deals with the seizures of cash and listed assets by conducting civil investigations following seizures by other teams in the ECU, with a view to forfeiting seized cash and assets to be invested back into the community

• Nearly £3m from the Confiscation and Restrain Unit – this is made up of financial investigators who restrain assets such as houses and then seek Confiscation Orders following criminal convictions.

Detective Superintendent Joseph Harrop, who leads our ECU, said: “The £15,751,210 figure represents our most successful year to date in terms of asset recovery and is a credit to all those who have worked really hard to successfully seize, confiscate, recover and forfeit these criminal finances.

“Their hard work has helped to reduce the amount of violent crime on our streets as well as recovering funds that are used to benefit local communities across Greater Manchester and policing operations within GMP to allow us as a force to prevent and tackle criminality to make the county a safer place to live and work.

“Tackling economic crime is a lengthy but rewarding task, and we work relentlessly to ensure that those involved in criminal behaviour are brought to justice and pay the price for their crimes.”