by Dennis Ambler on SPPI

For the last eight years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been under the chairmanship of Indian businessman and economist, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. He is frequently referred to as a climate scientist. He most emphatically is not, as is shown by his website biography.

The IPCC is supposed to be advisory, not policy prescriptive. That principle has been scattered to the four winds under Dr Pachauri’s leadership.

He has misrepresented himself as a scientist and allowed others to also misrepresent his qualifications without correction.

He is not afraid to tell lies about the work of the Panel and the credibility of its processes, as he has demonstrated recently over claims in AR4 of accelerating disasters and shown to be dependent on questionable sources. He is still denying any flaws in the IPCC.

He is not afraid to tell lies about his own business interests, including absolute denial that he has any business interests.

He denies close relationships with the Tata group, a major global energy player, when he and some of his staff share a variety of committee and board-room places with them and work on projects together.

He has a phenomenal portfolio of interests, both academic and financial, but denies any conflict of interest with his role at the IPCC and claims to receive no direct remuneration.

He has links with activist groups such as WWF, WRI, NRDC and others and he has strong links with several long standing UN proponents of global governance such as Maurice Strong and Sir Crispin Tickle.

He is a board member of carbon trading exchanges and as chairman of the IPCC he advocates carbon trading to “save the environment”.

Some Teri staff members are also members of other organisations that benefit from the policies he advocates. At least one member is involved in carbon trading. Conflict of interest has been taken to new levels.

He and his staff make up a significant number of the Indian premier’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change and have major input into the National Plan.
He and his colleague Nitin Desai are both involved with carbon trading companies. This is pure conflict of interest.

Carbon policies in Europe are already damaging fragile economies and placing unfair energy cost burdens on the poor. Fraud is widespread.

Dr Pachauri has persistently advocated energy control policies for the US and told Canada she should not harvest her oil shales, whilst at the same time insisting that India will not give up coal-fired power generation.

He has had extended discussions over time with US policy makers, advocating cap and trade policies for the US.

The whole thrust of climate talks has always been about wealth transfer from the developed world to the developing world. Yet it has long been accepted that if Kyoto had been adopted in full, it would have made an insignificant difference to global temperatures.

The Indian government has an extensive arms program, including nuclear, running into tens of billions of dollars per year, whilst seeking wealth transfer from the West for its poor. This seems basically immoral. Read much more here.

By Leigh Phillips, EU Observer

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - 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.

Fraud at the heart of the ETS has hurt the reputation of the EU’s flagship climate programme. 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 Euros from government coffers.

On Friday (30 April), it was revealed that UK tax authorities had raided 81 different offices and homes earlier in the week, arresting 22 individuals - 13 in England and further eight in Scotland.

The swoop, which occurred two days earlier, involved roughly 450 staff from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

German authorities simultaneously raided 230 premises, including the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and the offices of RWE, one of the largest energy firms in Europe, according to the Bloomberg news agency.

Three individuals in Germany were arrested. Seven of the suspects were employees of Deutsche Bank, although none were among those taken into custody.

The operation, which targetted a total of 50 companies and some 150 suspects in Europe’s biggest economy, involved around a thousand investigators from Germany.

Authorities in eight other EU nations - Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Portugal, as well as Norway, outside the bloc - were approached by Frankfurt prosecutors for their help in the investigation.

Computers, mobiles, memory sticks and business records were seized, as well as undisclosed sums of cash.

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 raids come after Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, last December issued a warning that ETS fraud had resulted in around €5 billion in lost revenues.

In announcing its investigations into the pan-European racket, the agency said that as much as 90 percent of the entire market volume on emissions exchanges was caused by fraudulent activity.

European Commission climate spokeswoman Maria Kokkonen told EUobserver that a new EU directive on reverse charges for emissions trading, which aims to close off this form of tax fraud, was implemented in February of this year specifically to deal with this problem.

Under the directive, EU member states may for a temporary period optionally apply a reverse charge to switch the responsibility of paying the government the VAT collected from the vendor to the customer.

Also in February, the EU toughened up the requirements for opening an account with national carbon registries. “Carbon emissions fraud is a very serious problem and the commission is working closely with member states to combat this problem,” said Ms Kokkonen. “In fact, the response to this problem has been very swift since it first came to light last summer.” “However, it should be underlined that this does not affect the overall functioning of the EU-ETS.”

Environmentalist critics of the ETS however said that such criminal activity is not the exception to the rule, but intrinsic to a carbon market. “Carbon markets are highly susceptible to fraud, given their complexity and the fact that it is not always clear what is being traded,” said Oscar Reyes of Carbon Trade Watch.

“It’s good that the commission and tax authorities are clamping down, but it is unlikely that this will be the last case of carousel fraud, but also unlikely that it will be the last type of fraud involved in emissions trading.” Read post here.