U.K. fraud investigators arrested nine people Wednesday over a
suspected GBP38 million carbon credit trading scam, the Financial Times
reports Thursday, citing the U.K.'s Revenue & Customs Department.
The department said 130 officers made arrests in Greater
London, and Gravesend in Kent and raided 27 businesses and residential
premises as part of an investigation launched at the start of this year
to curb alleged cross-border fraud to evade valued-added tax, or VAT.
The arrests were made just weeks after the U.K. Treasury imposed
emergency rules in an effort to curb the problem, the Financial Times
reports.
The government last month followed France and the
Netherlands in abolishing VAT on carbon credits in an attempt to make
it impossible to use them for import scams, whereby carbon credits are
bought VAT-free and then sold to customers in the U.K. with the VAT
included in the price.