EU Carbon crooks

The eminent Dr. Richard North at the EU Referendum blog comments on another major EU scandal:

Earlier reports on the EU carbon trading suspension were talking about €7 million-worth of permits going missing.Then reports started telling us that the actual figure was €28 million – but that was only what had come out of the woodwork. Now the Estonain Free Press is talking about €40 million.

Despite the intangible nature, of the permits – they are all, selling permission to emit carbon dioxide – this is real money, which is going to come out of our pockets one way or another. Needless to say, the EU is stepping up the damage limitation attempts with Jos Delbeke, director general for climate action at the EU commission, claiming that the number of missing permits is equivalent to 0.02 percent of total allowances in the market.

A lot, lot more than that have gone missing though. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Most readers will recall that in 2009, the Emission Trading System (ETS) had been the victim of fraudulent traders in the past 18 months. This resulted in losses of approximately €5 billion from several national tax revenues. It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90 percent of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.

Read the entire article here.