Call it a fraud within a fraud. Carbon credits trading in Europe is suspected of massive fraud, with prosecutors in Britain and Germany raiding firms engaged in the business. The EU Observer reports:
Traders involved in Europe's flagship climate change programme, the Emissions Trading System - some of whom work at Germany's biggest banks and energy firms - were the focus of a series of raids and arrests by British and German prosecutors in part of a massive pan-European crackdown on CO2-credit VAT fraud.
A total of 25 people were arrested amid a blitz by authorities on hundreds of company offices in the two countries, including Deutsche Bank and energy firm RWE, in a case involving the theft of an estimated €180 miillion from government coffers.
Prosecutors do not yet see the warmist panic and its financial scam carbon credits as a fraud designed to enrich Al Gore, Goldman Sachs, and all of Obama's friends that are investors in the Chicago Climate Exchange. All they are concerned with is an apparent scheme to evade Value Added Tax payments:
The criminal activity the raids focussed on relates to what is known as "carousel fraud." Criminals establish themselves in one EU member state and open a trading account with the national carbon credit registry. They then buy carbon credits in a different country, which makes them exempt from VAT. These are then sold to buyers in the original country, but with VAT slapped on, although the VAT then just disappears along with the trader and the money never arrives in government coffers.
The report indicates that up to an astonishing 90 percent of the trades have involved VAT fraud. Actually, it should not astonish us that people attracted to a business built on fraud also pick-up an extra bit of profit by defrauding the government out of tax revenues.
Hat tip: Lucianne.com
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