Climategate: European Carbon Credit Trading System Plagued by Fraud
The European Union’s flagship cap-and-trade carbon credit trading system is plagued by massive fraud and is effectively under the control of organized crime, according to a December 9 statement issued by European police. Europol, an EU-wide criminal intelligence agency similar to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, says bogus trading at the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) has exceeded €5 billion (U.S.$7 billion) over the past 18 months alone. Europol says that in some EU countries, up to 90 percent of the entire market volume is fraudulent.
News of the scale of the fraud, which comes just weeks after hundreds of hacked emails suggest that scientists have manipulated and exaggerated global warming data, will cast further doubt over the effectiveness of carbon trading as a way to curb emissions. It may also provide fresh ammunition to critics of the Obama administration’s plans to implement a cap-and-trade system in the United States that is largely based on the European model.
Europol says the fraud was first suspected in late 2008, when the volume of trades in European Unit Allowances (EUA), the carbon credits that companies in EU countries buy to offset their greenhouse gas output, mysteriously spiked.
In the European Union, caps are placed on the total amount of carbon dioxide that may be emitted. Companies that pollute more than their allotted share, such as steel plants, power plants, cement-makers, and other big industries, are required to buy carbon credits from those companies that do not exceed their allotted share, in order to keep the total output below the prescribed cap.
In the latest scam (which is a mutation of the EU’s notorious value-added tax carousel fraud), criminals open a carbon trading account on one of six recognized European carbon markets, in the name of a newly registered company. They then buy tax-free carbon credits in another country, transfer those credits into their account, and then sell them to a carbon broker in yet another country. The fraudsters collect VAT (which varies from between 15 to 25 percent depending on the EU country) on each transaction, but never pay the VAT monies to any European tax agency. The company and its owners vanish before tax authorities realize they are owed large amounts of VAT.
The carousel tax fraud repeats itself over and over, as the criminals set up new companies, using different front men, to collect more and more VAT. Organized crime rings are thought to have dozens or even hundreds of companies whose real owners are difficult if not impossible to trace.
VAT fraud is endemic in the EU, which has 27 different national tax systems and no effective cross-border coordinating mechanism. Criminals are able to defraud the European VAT system largely because goods (especially carbon credits, which are invisible and highly tradable) moved from one EU country to another do not attract VAT at the point of entry. Once the goods are sold to a wholesaler or retailer, VAT is charged. The fraudsters then purloin the tax revenues rather than passing them on to national tax authorities.
Epoch of Islamic Terror, meet the Epoch of Scams.
The World has become a maelstrom of insanities.
“Europol says that in some EU countries, up to 90 percent of the entire market volume is fraudulent.”
That’s truly a shocking statistic.
I mean, who’d have imagined that as much of 10% of carbon credits are legitimate?
when was the 12th Iman supposed to show up ? before or after the Copenhagen Conference ?
by the time this is over (climategate /global warming fraud) we will be back to bartering with goats and sheep.
well this is a big farce
BTW the big boss of “ArcelorMittal” is Indian.
Well I guess you can’t expect much more from a bunch of academic welfare recipients. These reality hicks, most of whom have never had a job outside of the government trough, are really child like in anything resembling practicality in their approach to real life situations. Everyone makes mistakes but I think the difference is they are not mentally aware enough to even realize a mistake has been made.
I firmly believe when it comes to the academic community there is strong link between intelligence and stupidity.
Europe, I am convinced, is officially gone.
Gangsters? Of course! This is worldwide Communism which is the ultimate Gang!
As a bright person said: The environmental movement is like a watermelon–green on the outside, red on the inside. One only needs to look at the pictures of “protester” anarchists in Copenhagen to see the future of Europe.
Communists and Marxists need to be beaten down vigorously wherever they live–they seem to kinda like it–but I fear the West, and especially as it still exists in Europe, is not up to the task. They are abated by the milk of the nanny state. This ain’t good, even despite how foolish they all look in Copenhagen.
Scam Carbon Trading Market, scam Climate Change. Is anyone surprised?
“up to 90 percent of the entire market volume is fraudulent”
It’s 100 percent scam. All scam, all the time. Just follow the money into Al Gore’s pockets and you will understand everything you need to know.
Look at the source code, it’s all here in plain English, even a journalist can understand this:
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/0000000000000790
*Chuckles*
Agreed who knew 10% of the market was “real?”
The whole damned thing is a scam that you and I are paying for.
Who will be the first “big” political leader to stand up and point out that this emperor has no clothes?
Where we need leadership all we have are opinion poll followers and with all of these billions being tossed out willy nilly can global inflation of huge proportions be far behind?
“Everyone makes mistakes but I think the difference is they are not mentally aware enough to even realize a mistake has been made.”
Glass #6, I don’t think a mistake has been made at all. I believe the academic hicks you refer to are the criminals cashing in on this scam. The hicks are the naive rubes like us who keep voting people like Obama into office to perpetuate this scam.
“by the time this is over (climategate /global warming fraud) we will be back to bartering with goats and sheep”
Samson #4. I’ve never bartered with a sheep. What do you offer them?
Climavangelism is nothing more than emotional blackmail on an epic scale. It’s despicable. The science that drives it is junk, its followers are useful idiots, and its instigators and public champions are corrupt to the core. It’s an international heist and Gore and his energy and carbon-trading buddies stand to make a windfall unlike anything in history. They make Bernard Madoff look rather amateurish at best, but their day of reckoning is fast approaching too. If proper justice isn’t served, wait and see what African despots have planned for these charlatans when the handouts they’re demanding don’t materialize. They’ve painted themselves into quite a corner..
11. willis:
Samson #4. I’ve never bartered with a sheep. What do you offer them?
offer them flowers and chocolates for starters.
What do expect from a scheme that came out of the mind of Ken Lay and Enron?
One has to assume that the folks at the CRU and similar outfits around the world were honestly convinced that AGW is real, has been caused—or greatly worsened—by man-made carbon dioxide, and is bad. All of those may be sincere beliefs, in spite of the evidence that much of the global-temperature data on which they are based may be inaccurate or fudged, and in spite of the fact that they themselves have tried to suppress independent review of the data as well as those who would do the independent reviewing, and in spite of the fact that their computer models of trends of global temperature have failed to predict actual changes in temperature. (The last, by the way, is where the “scientific” approach was blatantly violated. Science, after all, is about prediction; if the prediction fails, the model, or its basis, or something, was simply wrong. At that point real scientists start over, rather than hunker down and try to suppress the opposition.)
All of the above pales, however, before the fact that they seem actually to have expected that the politicians on whom they relied to save the world from CO2 would approach that great task with integrity, not with intent to enrich themselves and their cronies.
Clearly no one who actually believed that is smart enough to be a scientist – which perhaps explains everything…
So organized crime groups are ripping off the system instead of the disorganized governments. People are buying and selling intangible objects, really just a concept,which provides absolutley no value, creates no wealth, and is at the heart of it just a scheme to take money from some people and transfer it to other people. The entire premis of the system is criminal.
Have an Evil day
I love this article. Follow the money….
“The carbon market in the US is expected to be trillions of dollars by 2015, and the technology we are offering is as little as 10% to half of that number”. Earning only 10% of a trillion represents an income of 100 billions a year, which is twice the total wealth of Bill Gates. Guess who is behind this corporation, to become a trillionaire? You have to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuifVNofEtk
The VAT skimming is the statutory illegality.. The entire “carbon-trading” scheme is a “legal” construct based on imaginary, intangible trading units. This is is a wonderful concept to money-grubbing financiers, who have cooked up similar things in the past to fleece us. (“Us” being those who actually work for a living by producing tangible goods and services.) “Derivatives trading” is another one of these smoke-and-mirrors things that’s been done in the past.