LONDON (Reuters) - The British tax office arrested seven people in London on Wednesday in a suspected 38 million pounds ($62.6 million) value-added tax fraud in the European market in carbon allowances, it said.
Officers from HM Revenues and Customs (HMRC) searched 27 properties around London and arrested six men and one woman in early morning raids, the HMRC said in a statement.
“Those arrested are believed to be part of an organized crime group operating a network of companies trading large volumes of high-value carbon credits,” it said.
“It is thought that the proceeds of this crime have then been used to finance lavish lifestyles and the purchase of prestige vehicles.”
The HMRC said further arrests were likely but it could not give the names of those arrested or the companies involved, nor could it estimate the total scale of the suspected fraud or say if it was isolated to Britain.
Under the $90 billion European Union carbon emissions trading market, companies trade permits called EU Allowances that allow them to emit climate-warming greenhouse gases.
Britain said last month it would make carbon trading exempt from value-added tax (VAT) in response to a suspected trading scam called carousel fraud.
Through carousel fraud, also called missing trader fraud, fraudsters import goods VAT-free from other countries, then sell the goods to domestic buyers, charging them VAT. The sellers then disappear without paying the tax to the government.
France and the Netherlands have also taken similar measures in the past two months after rumors of fraudulent trade circled emissions exchanges in those countries.
Investment bank and broker sources told Reuters they were concerned that they may have to foot the unpaid tax bill, or possibly face legal action for having traded with fraudsters unknowingly.
“As well as further arrests, we can expect VAT assessments to now be issued (and) HMRC may seek to recover missing VAT from parties unwittingly caught up in the fraud,” said Sarah Donald of law firm Dundas & Wilson.
HMRC estimates it lost between 2-3 billion pounds in potential tax revenues between 2005-2006 due to carousel fraud.
Read more here.
By Kevin Libin, National Post
Though a striking number of prominent scientists have recently recanted their initial belief in manmade global warming, joining an already robust community of distinguished skeptics, those who continue to advance the theory could be their own worst enemy. Whatever the truth is about anthropogenic climate change - the contention that carbon dioxide emitted by human industrial activity - the tendency among some climate-change believers to embellish the effects of planetary warming has only served to undermine their credibility in the eyes of the public and, less so, the media.
For years, global warming advocates held up every calving ice shelf, failed crop or natural disaster as proof of a dawning warming apocalypse; whether it was too much rain, or not enough - either way, it was abnormal, and the fault of Big Oil and anyone questioning that, labeled a “denier.” As Vicky Pope, a senior British climatologist, citing overblown claims of rapid melting of arctic sea ice, and the ice sheet around Greenland, bemoaned earlier this year, for scientists, “overplaying natural variations in the weather as climate change is just as much a distortion of the science as underplaying them to claim that climate change has stopped or is not happening.”
But probably nothing could damage the credibility of climate change believers [more] than the recent revelation by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that it has lost or destroyed all the original data used to construct historic global temperature records. The CRU, at the University of East Anglia in the UK, which has been using information collected from weather stations across the globe for decades, is probably the most widely cited source worldwide for those mounting a case that the earth has exhibited an inexorable warming trend: its website boasts that CRU’s research has “set the agenda for the major research effort in, and political preoccupation with, climate research.” The critical raw climate data responsible, which scientists of all climate-creeds have a natural interest in, is now gone, apparently, forever. With the exception of a handful of countries that the CRU has agreements with to sell its data, all that remains for the bulk of the statistics are “value added” versions, which is to say, consolidated, homogenized data. Actually, the CRU says it doesn’t even have all the data for countries it has data-sharing agreements with. “We know that there were others, but cannot locate them, possibly as we’ve moved offices several times during the 1980s,” the CRU writes in a rather embarrassing explanation for all this posted on its website.
The Unit makes this admission now, coincidentally, as it faced a flurry of requests, under Britain’s Freedom of Information Act, to make available its data to interested researchers. The CRU, it seems, had not been much in a sharing mood prior to that. UK’s register reports that Professor Phil Jones, the fellow in charge of maintaining the CRU data set, told an Australian researcher a few years back that he refused to publicly share his statistics. “We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?” The idea that scientific progress rests completely on the constant testing and retesting, verifying and refuting, of studies, seems not to be shared by Mr. Jones, even though this particular data set had massive implications for policymaking in pretty well every country on the planet.
Unfortunately for him, as part of a publicly managed and funded organization, his group was nonetheless subject to transparency laws, and so, when researchers sought to shake the data loose without his consent, it had mysteriously vanished. “We have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value,” they explained in coming up dry for the FOI requests. As Stephen McIntyre, the Canadian economist famous for his addiction to poring through volumes of mind-numbing climate statistics, and occasionally finding errors (as he did, with Ross McKitrick, in deconstructing and undermining the famous “hockey stick” graph), writes on his Climate Audit blog, it appears that the impoverished CRU even lacked filing cabinets in which to store its records.
With access only to “homogenized” consolidated data, there is no way for researchers - skeptical or believers - to verify or refute the original statistics or calculations behind the CRU’s widely relied-upon weather information. The data could be accurate, or not. It could be that temperatures haven’t been warming at the rate the CRU claims, or it could be that they’re warming faster, perhaps arguing for an even direr situation for the planet. Nor can the raw data be run through different modeling programs in order to corroborate conclusions, or question them. The science is permanently frozen into the CRU’s original grid, and we are, evidently, forced to assume everything is perfectly accurate, a relatively rare thing in complex statistical calculations compiled over decades.
Which is why Mr. McIntyre (who has also found evidence that could, maybe, suggest that the CRU has been deleting important data files from its servers) isn’t the only one incredulous and indignant over the CRU’s missing records. Roger Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado Center for Science and Technology Policy Research is a firm believer in global warming. But even he calls this a “big” “misstep,” writing on his blog that “just because climate change is important and because there are opponents to action that will seize upon whatever they can to make their arguments, does not justify overlooking or defending this degree of scientific sloppiness and ineptitude.” Scientists of all climate creeds know that access to basic data is critical to keeping research credible. Of course, the CRU is only one of a couple key organizations whose research based on historical weather data is used to support global warming theory. Given that the Unit has admitted now that it cannot fully substantiate its work, it raises the uncomfortable question of whether CRU’s historic climate research should be used any longer at all. Read more here.
By Will Alexander
My colleagues and I have developed and verified a multi-year, regional, hydrometeorological prediction model. Last year my article titled Likelihood of a Global Drought in 2009—2016 was published in the South African Civil Engineer, circulation 8,000. The drought has just started in parts of South Africa.
On 12 August our Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs announced that parts of the lower Limpopo River catchment have been declared a water supply disaster area. This is in the far northern region of South Africa. The Albasini Dam that supplies the Louis Trichardt area is only 26 percent full. The Middle Letaba Dam is only 6 percent full.
On Sunday 16 August, prayers for rain were held in George, which is in the southern coastal area of South Africa. The dams in this region are also at a very low level. These two events not only confirm my prediction but also the views of others that global climatic disturbances are on the way. How will they affect the Copenhagen discussions and beyond?
Our predictions were based on observation theory applied to a wealth of hydrometeorological data. The essence was the presence of statistically significant, 95 percent, 21-year periodicity in the data. The periodicity is synchronous with variations in solar activity. This provided the causal relationships but was not necessary for the predictions. These were based solely on the observed periodicity in the data, whatever its cause.
Despite a prolonged and thorough study we were unable to detect any unexplained anomalies in the data that could be attributed to human activities. It is unlikely that our studies will influence the Copenhagen discussions, but hopefully all those participating in the discussions will have the sense to consider the likely future consequences regardless of the outcome of the discussions.
Recall the United Nations Secretary General’s recent appeal. We have just four months to secure the future of our planet. If we fail to act, climate change will intensify droughts, floods and other natural disasters. Water shortages will affect hundreds of millions of people. Malnutrition will engulf large parts of the developing world. Tensions will worsen. Social unrest - even violence - could follow.
It is an all or nothing declaration with no room for uncertainties or degrees of probability. There is no way whatsoever that any emissions control measures that the world undertakes can meaningfully reduce the future occurrence of extreme floods, droughts, and threats to water resources. These are as inevitable as night follows the day. Now consider the consequences when these climatic extremes occur in the years ahead.
Here in South Africa with our economic problems, unemployment and poverty what will be the social and political consequences of the unfulfilled assurances? What will be the consequences in the African countries to the north of us? They have neither the finances nor the scientific expertise to evaluate the measures that will be agreed to at Copenhagen. Like many other nations, they rely on the knowledge and integrity of the developed nations of the world who insist that these measures be implemented.
What about the international relations, particularly the reaction of those nations that have been forced to adopt stringent emissions control measures, which the subsequent events will demonstrate are fruitless? Also, what about all those countries that accepted the IPCC recommendations in good faith? What about the universal perception of science as an honourable profession?
The assumption that large financial donations from the affluent countries will solve these difficulties is nonsensical. In my position as a member of United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee Natural Disasters we discussed all these possible preventative and adaptation measures in detail.
The problems have not yet been solved. This United Nations body is still functioning. It will serve no purpose to duplicate its work based on decades of experience with the nonsensical proposals that we see in the climate change literature.
If no agreement is reached at Copenhagen, this will not solve the problem. It will only worsen it. The whole climate change issue will become a blame game where the developed nations blame the developing nations for the breakdown and its consequences. The threats to international trade and cooperation in other fields are obvious.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa is still in the process of finalising its policy ahead of Copenhagen, but always within economic constraints. Authorities have just announced that South Africa will still have to build many more coal-fired power stations. In another article on the same date it was stated that South Africa needs 40 new coal mines to prevent electricity shortages over the long term.
Last week our national electricity supplier announced that five new projects have been put on ice due to financial difficulties. Commentators said that this may deepen South Africa’s recession, halt opportunities in employment creation, and affect supplies of cement, steel and other commodities.
Three of the abandoned projects are a pumped storage project, a solar power plant, and a wind farm. These were to contribute to South Africa’s reduction in the use of coal for power generation. These objectives are now indefinitely postponed.
There is no pre-Copenhagen legislation in the pipeline. No present or future South African government would dare introduce legislation that had a negative economic impact. No African government would accept promises of financial assistance in exchange for the implementation of emissions control measures. We have heard them all before. The prospects of success at Copenhagen are increasingly remote. We should now concern ourselves with the issues beyond Copenhagen.