From the Telegraph: European carbon market suspended over fraud fears
The European carbon market has been thrown into turmoil after the scandal-hit scheme was suspended for a week over suspicions of fraud.
More than €2bn (£1.7bn) of trade is likely to be disrupted after the European Commission said it would prevent transactions until January 26.
The suspension follows allegations that 475,000 carbon credits worth €7m were stolen in a hacking attack on the Czech carbon register. It appears that the intangible allowances were bounced between eastern European countries before disappearing without a trace.
…
“Although such incidents are negligible in terms of actual market impact, they will over time undermine the credibility of carbon trading as a policy measure to reduce emissions in Europe. Immediate actions to improve the security of EU registries are thus needed.”
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Full story at the Telegraph here
“It appears that the intangible allowances were bounced between eastern European countries before disappearing without a trace.”
How can something intangible disappear when it doesn’t exist in the first place?
I think they are worried about the wrong credibility issue.
It`s called carousel trading, it started with mobile phones, The fraud involves a company importing a mobile phone from an EU company without paying VAT and then selling the phone on with VAT before disappearing and pocketing the tax.
Same with carbon trading but they made it easier.
http://www.euractiv.com/en/enterprise-jobs/commission-fight-vat-fraud-schemes/article-184681
Good. After the credibility of academics, universities and institutions lie in ruins, the “fresh air trading bubble” has finally been exposed. Note that the EU was the last to catch on. The last man standing is the govenment, who rake in billions (in the UK) through taxing power, cars, planes, etc., etc.
Now that the CAGW scam has finally been exposed, when can I expect a reduction in my tax bill? Let me predict that this will never happen, and that this has always been the “end game”.
This latest incident appears to be rather small beer don’t forgot the multi-billion carbon trading frauds (recently estimated at $7B USD, or 2% of GDP) in Denmark which lead to this richly ironic Guardian headline …
“Copenhagen summit: Denmark rushes in laws to stop carbon trading scam”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/03/copenhagen-summit-carbon-trading-scam
It’s only the small change that they are chasing.
This story from the Times in 2009 puts it into perspective:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/industrials/article6945991.ece
LAKSHMI MITTAL, Britain’s richest man, stands to benefit from a £1 billion windfall from a European scheme to curb global warming. His company ArcelorMittal, the steel business where he is chairman and chief executive, will make the gain on “carbon credits” given to it under the European emissions trading scheme (ETS).
The scheme grants companies permits to emit CO2 up to a specified “cap”. Beyond this they must buy extra permits. An investigation has revealed that ArcelorMittal has been given far more carbon permits than it needs. It has the largest allocation of any organisation in Europe.
The investigation has also shown that ArcelorMittal and Eurofer, which represents European steel makers at European level, have lobbied intensively in Brussels. This has included threatening to move plants out of Europe at a cost of 90,000 jobs, and asking European commissioners to meet Mittal.
ArcelorMittal is now free to sell its surplus permits on the market or to hoard them for future use. The latter would allow it to avoid cutting greenhouse gas emissions for years, effectively undermining the point of the scheme.
Either way, the company will have gained assets worth around £1 billion by 2012. The eventual value could be much greater. Each carbon permit is currently worth about £12.70 but the European Union has said it wants to drive this price above £30.
The rest of the article at the link.
In order for the UK to have any future energy capacity the government is counting on carbon prices going up to £75 /t by 2050.
This one example of why it is so hard to get a counter argument publicised!
I guess than plan by pols and Goldman Sachs to monetize the air has not been working out too well.
Funny that the same plan which has been a magnet to politicians (Obama, McCain) and financial parasites (Goldman, Al Gore, et al) is also the favorite of criminals.
They are worried about a Tax issue, they don’t care about anything else.
Nigel Brereton says:
January 20, 2011 at 1:09 am
“,,,,Reports by some news outlets suggest figures of 90% of trading in 2009 fell into this ‘business’ plan.”
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I too have read reports that in some of the markets fraudulent trading accounts for perhaps 90% of all trades. If that is so, one wonders how the commission can say with a straight face “Although such incidents are negligible in terms of actual market impact, they will over time undermine the credibility of carbon trading as a policy measure to reduce emissions in Europe. Immediate actions to improve the security of EU registries are thus needed.”
This market needs to be completely closed for good. Trading CO2 will not limit CO2 emissions and therefore if CO2 is truly a bad thing, it will do nothing to curb the dangers. This trade simply means that life becomes more expensive for the ordinary consumer (who eventually picks up the tab), and revenue streams simply line the pockets of criminals and bankers (I know that some would class the latter as a sub-set of the former).
It should not be hard to find these criminals. They have built absolutley massive storage tanks somewhere to store all the CO2 they have obtained through the credits. These tanks must be easy to spot from satellites, surely? Trace the criminals back through the contractors who built the tanks; Simples!
/sarc
In other news: Catholic indulgence market crashes over doubts that Purgatory is real.
Well Ken,
I have a piece of property on the moon and we could set up a government with no conscience. The problem is no air to sell on the moon???
Fraud…breeds more fraud.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
However they keep on going ahead (who cares being truthful!):
http://earthsummit2012.blogspot.com/
http://www.earthsummit2012.org/
Carbon trading is the only market in which Fraud benefits all participants.
Fraudsters get to spin money out of nothing.
Fraudulent credits depress the market price of carbon. This benefits net buyers of carbon credits.
OK, Fraudulent credits harm net sellers of carbon credits, except it too easy for them to get into the game as well – for example, if a dishonest (god forbid) alternative energy scheme takes power from the national grid, and sells it back as renewable energy, various incentive schemes ensure a tidy profit – even though net power in = net power out. Though I’m sure they are all too honest to do anything like that.
Fraud would benefit dishonest market administrators, though I’m sure they are all too honest to accept enormous bribes on offer to allow dodgy carbon credits into their systems.
If everyone is on the take, noone suffers, and it is a net benefit to the economy.
Of course, I’m sure its nothing like this.
“Although such incidents are negligible in terms of actual market impact”
LMAO! That should have been held back for the “Friday Funny”! When no one is buying why would anyone want to nick them? Oops! Of course! I forgot the BBC pension fund!
I can hear Delingpole’s fingers hitting the keyboard as I type!
Richard Heg says:
January 20, 2011 at 1:28 am
“On the subject of fraud, from the BBC today:”
Please tell me I have missed a day and its Friday Richard!
As Richard Black send people to look at the report on BBC impartiality in his blog I am never sure how to take him but the picture in the article is a cracker when it comes down to AGW!
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/50855000/jpg/_50855803_010876303-1.jpg
For those who want a look!
Surely if these carbon credits have disappeared into ‘thin air’, this must have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere..?
This is disastrous..!
Vis-a-vis Richard Heg’s link to ‘fake’ climate conferences – surely there’s a golden opportunity for us all here to take money from the ‘warmists’..? For a start, I wouldn’t have used London as the venue – too cold this time of year – what about Acapulco..? The Seychelles..? A new ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio..?
Oh – the opportunities are endless…
So CO2 really is dangerous! All those unrestrained intangibles bouncing around Eastern Europe! Think of the children!!
Joe Lalonde says:
January 20, 2011 at 4:40 am
“Well Ken,
I have a piece of property on the moon and we could set up a government with no conscience. The problem is no air to sell on the moon???”
Joe, I have bottled some clean Florida air. It is obtained only along the southwest coast at sea level when the wind is out of the west to ensure the highest quality. It is only $3 plus $67 for shipping and handling per liter. How much do you need? Cash or money orders only, no personal checks. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. (disclaimer: opening the container voids any guarantee of air quality)
Fraudulent traders mainly from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland pocketed an estimated €5bn.
This is “negligible in terms of actual market impact” — Are they Nuts?
“It appears that the intangible allowances were bounced between eastern European countries before disappearing without a trace.”
Kafka is alive and, apparently, writing for the Telegraph.
There is humor in this. Something that did not exist has disappeared and they can’t find it. And immediate actions to improve the security of EU registries are thus needed. What else is in the EU registries that does not exist and the EU wants to secure, missing money perhaps or a money trail.
When the fraudsters are caught, they should be sentanced to jail until the average Global temperature rises by half a degree
Trading paper instruments rather than real goods is nothing new. It has gone one since the invention of cotton futures contracts. I’m sure the cotton traders were always vexed over the pesky problem that at the end of the trading chain, someone got stuck with a load of real cotton. The carbon exchange is a trader’s dream that overcomes that inconvenience. At the end of the carbon credit trading chain, no one is stuck with anything real (no embarrassing bales of cotton sitting on your front lawn).
Maybe we should set up a “feelgood” exchange. Those of us feeling really, really good could agree to tone it down a bit at some future date certain in exchange for filthy lucre. A certificate of that transaction could then be entered into a “feel good” market where a chain of futures contracts would bet the value of the certificate up or down. At the expiration date, the original seller would “tone it down” and the ultimate purchaser of the contract could gaze at the contract an feel better about himself.
It is not just that some trades within the market are a fraud, the entire market is very probably a fraud since it is very probably based upon fraudulent concepts, namely that the global temperature records are accurate, that global temperatures are increasing at unprecedented rates, that CO2 emissions are responsible for this, that a reduction in European CO2 emissions will have some effect, that CO2 is harmful. When this underlying fraud unravels as it very probably will if global temperatures cool (or at any rate fail to rise) over the course of the next 10 years or so, the sh*t will hit the fan.
If and when this all unravels, some powerful people have lost substantial sums of monies those powerful people will claim that they were misled and will want their pound of flesh. Heads will roll.
If financial institutions have bet 100s of billions of dollars on carbon futures, there will almost certainly have to be another bail out of the financial institutions much like the bail out that we have just conducted.
We may be smirking at the present development. However, all of this is not a joke since it could have serious ramifications unless this madness is stopped quickly once and for all and before it takes hold.
Tom in Florida says:
January 20, 2011 at 6:21 am
“… clean Florida air…”
{snicker} Only on occasion. Generally we deal with the smoke from fires… controlled or otherwise. At least our fires… even the ones that get away from them, smell really nice. I would hazard to say that we have the best smelling forest fires in the country.
It’s the Cypress.