Members of Surrey Police and Sussex Police Economic Crime Unit recognised for accomplishments at annual national awards ceremony

The Keith Hughes Awards for Excellence in Financial Investigation were held at The Guildhall in London on Friday, June 28.

Among the nominees were individuals assigned to the ECU’s Recovery of Assets, Investigation and Disruption (RAID) team, which uses financial intelligence to investigate, disrupt and tackle criminality across the two counties.

Since it was set up last year, the RAID team has successfully frozen almost £2 million in suspected criminal proceeds.

Detective Sergeant Dominic Brown, of the Economic Crime Unit, said: “I am pleased that the work of the team has been recognised with these nominations.

“This is a relatively new team with a focus on utilising financial intelligence to disrupt criminality across Sussex and Surrey, and I’m proud of how hard the team have worked to learn this new area of work and identify and disrupt money laundering offences.”

Also nominated was Graham Miles, who worked on Operation Houston, a modern day slavery investigation and financial abuse case where the victim was alleged to have worked for a family for many years with little or no gain.

Through painstaking investigative enquiries including the assessment of 35 bank accounts, he was able to provide valuable evidence to a judge, who ordered a Modern Slavery Repatriation Order in the sum of £198,000 which was awarded to the victim in April out of confiscation funds – the first order of its kind in the country.

The awards were set up in memory of Detective Constable Keith Hughes, a financial investigator with the former National Crime Squad who died from cancer in 2003.

It promotes the values that Keith’s work and life inspired, through recognising the achievements of those who have made an outstanding contribution within UK financial investigation and law enforcement.