The economy today
Financial scams: the carbon tax scam
Audio 04:04
Carbon tax fraud has allowed scammers to embezzle between 1.6 and 1.8 billion euros in France.
© JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP
By: Alexis Bedu Follow
3 mins
One day, a scam.
RFI invites you to return this week to these financial scams whose instigators command admiration through their ingenuity.
Today, the carbon tax scam in France.
A VAT fraud that allowed crooks in the Paris region to divert between 1.6 and 1.8 billion euros in France.
To understand this fraud, we have to go back to 2005. To limit greenhouse gas emissions, a large market for carbon quotas has been created.
Quotas were allocated to polluting companies: if they did not reach their ceiling, they could resell these quotas to other companies.
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Quotas set by the European Commission each year for each company.
The biggest polluters thus buy from those who have not reached their quotas.
Little by little, the market is opening up to all companies, whether or not they are identified as polluting.
Our scammers of the day, fraud specialists who are not at their first attempt, rush into a loophole: that of VAT, value added tax.
They apply to this carbon market a technique that they have already widely tested, particularly in telephony.
How exactly do they do it
?
First, they create a carbon quota management company.
Then comes the scam: they buy tax-free allowances from foreign companies to resell them in France, adding 20% VAT.
It is this 20% VAT that they embezzle by not handing it over to the State.
Fraud made easier because carbon quotas are immaterial, they leave almost no trace.
And then creating management companies for these quotas was very simple and very quick at the time.
This is what Grégory Zaoui, one of the masterminds of the scam, says in the Netflix documentary "
The Kings of the Scam
".
“
I am doing a test, I believe with
30,000 euros.
I buy, I put them on sale and in a few minutes, a few seconds even, I am credited with
30,000 euros plus VAT.
Isn't there a wolf, something hidden
?
It's too simple.
It seemed so simple to me.
»
Who are these men?
The CO2 scam has finally been practiced by a multitude of characters, several teams are formed.
The most infamous scam cell is that set up by mobsters from the Belleville district of Paris.
Mardoché Mouly and Samy Souied team up with a wealthy financier, Arnaud Mimran.
Bring him capital, they make it grow via the carbon tax market.
When some stop after a few million euros pocketed, the trio continues the scam and spends, spends, spends in full view of everyone, in Las Vegas in particular.
“
These are the most beautiful palaces in the world.
Maid inside who stays 24/7, any time you get up, you need a candy, they put it in your mouth.
The creator of Las Vegas, I say bravo to him.
Bravo, it's Euro Disney for adults
, "says Mardoché Mouly in Guillaume Nicloux's documentary, "
The Kings of the Scam
".
Money beyond the rational, and then the inevitable fall.
Damage of 283 million euros
From the fall of 2008, so after several months of fraud, the market regulator became aware that something was wrong.
Then justice takes up the case, but it will take years to reconstitute the mille-feuille of shell companies and financial operations around the world.
In 2010, one of the masterminds of the scam, Samy Souied, was shot dead in the heart of Paris.
Then in 2016, six men including Mardoché Mouly and Arnaud Mimran were sent back to court.
The two main protagonists will be sentenced to 8 years in prison as well as 283 million euros in damages: the price of their package.
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