Six people have been convicted of tax evasion in
Germany after an international probe into
carbon emissions trading involving Deutsche Bank.

The investigation is one of the biggest in the EU into how emissions traders created transactions to evade value added tax. German prosecutors are continuing to investigate 170 people and the suspected tax evasion amounted to €850M approx.

Six traders from Britain, Germany and France have been sentenced to between 3years and 7years 10months in prison.
No employees of Deutsche Bank have been charged in the inquiry but a prosecutor told the court this month that the VAT Fraud could not have been carried out without the involvement of the bank.

The probe is one of a number of problems to have beset the EU’s emissions trading system, which was set up in 2005 to create a price, and market, for CO2 and so help to reduce output of greenhouse gas.

www.ft.com  December, 2011