Five hundred German police and tax inspectors raided offices and residences connected with Deutsche Bank in Berlin, Frankfurt and Dusselforf, Wednesday over allegations of conspiracy involving over €300 million in carbon trading tax fraud.

A Deutsche Bank statement said, “”Public prosecutors searched Deutsche Bank offices today in connection with investigations that have been underway since the spring of 2010 against individuals suspected of tax evasion in the trading of CO2 emission certificates,”

Reuters reports that:

The European Union’s spot carbon market was hit by so-called carousel trade in 2009 and 2010, in which buyers imported emissions permits in one EU country without paying value-added tax (VAT) and then sold them to each other, adding tax to the price and pocketing the difference. To stop the problem of VAT fraud in the EU’s emissions trading scheme, in June the European Commission activated a new common carbon registry to replace some 30 national registries with a single platform. Investigations are continuing in other EU countries.

The raid occurred just five days after the United Nations agreed to a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol at COP 18 in Doha, Qatar. The Kyoto Protocol was set to expire at the end of the year taking substantial parts of the European carbon trading market with it. The new commitment period extends the opportunity for carbon traders to continue to reap hundreds of billions and continues to enable fraud as well.

In 2011 CFACT reported on over €850 million in German carbon trading fraud.

Düsseldorf tax investigators found that in less than a quarter of an hour emissions certificates might change hands five times. The same CO2 allowance would trade up to 18 times. A perverse form of recycling as the Süddeutschen Zeitung makes clear

Carbon trading, global warming policies and alternative energy schemes have become favorite tools of organized crime. CFACT’s Einar Du Rietz has written on mafia influence in wind farming. Maybe the Wind Fellas Blew Them. CFACT Europe has also reported on Italian carbon millionaire Oreste Vigorito’s fraud arrest.

The European Union and the United Nations have mandated and enabled this massive transfer of wealth to carbon traders. Former UNFCCC Secretary Yvo de Boer left his UN post to take up carbon trading.

While a few profiteers will amass carbon trading fortunes, these schemes will not impact the climate in any meaningful way. Whether conducted legally or illegally, all carbon trading is a waste and a scam which cries out to be halted.

At a time of global recession and hardship the carbon trading scam must stop.