[tomder55]

Headline Portugal
PM Antonio Costa has resigned over corruption charges related to the mining of lithium.

The long-serving leader quit after the Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on Tuesday morning that it had ordered the searches of some 40 properties for evidence.They included Mr Costa’s official residence and other government departments, including the infrastructure and environment ministries.
João Galamba and Duarte Cordeiro, the respective ministers, were named as official suspects in the investigation into the awarding of lithium mining concessions and other government licences.

Headline Switzerland Carbon offsets are worthless

South Pole, the world’s leading purveyor of offsets, is facing allegations that it exaggerated climate claims around its forest-protection projects. The uncertainty could influence how legions of companies try to slash their emissions.

Carbon Offset Seller's Forest-Protection Projects Questioned - Bloomberg


Headline Australia

A leading environmental scientist and whistle blower accuses the government offset program as being a fraud .

Professor Andrew Macintosh chaired the Integrity Committee of the ERF for six-and-a-half years and was a member of the King Review of Low-cost Sources of Abatement.
He and his colleagues have published a series of papers outlining systemic flaws in the ERF and the way it issues Australian carbon credits (ACCUs). They have labelled the ERF an “environmental and taxpayer fraud”....
“The available data suggests 70 to 80 per cent of the ACCUs issued to these projects are devoid of integrity – they do not represent real and additional abatement,” Professor Macintosh said......
“People are getting ACCUs for not clearing forests that were never going to be cleared; they are getting credits for growing trees that are already there; they are getting credits for growing forests in places that will never sustain permanent forests; and they are getting credits for operating electricity generators at large landfills that would have operated anyway.
“What is occurring is a fraud on the environment, a fraud on taxpayers and a fraud on unwitting private buyers of ACCUs, including private households who purchase ACCUs to offset their personal emissions.”

Australia’s carbon market a 'fraud on the environment' | ANU College of Law


Headline Taiwan
Couple convicted of a $3 million carbon credit scam
The couple in 2019 started to promote “carbon credit trading” and claimed to be authorized by international bodies that deal in “carbon emissions trading schemes,” enticing people to invest with promises of lucrative returns.

“Although Hsu and Yang knew their company was not dealing in ‘carbon credit trading,’ they set up a trading platform to lure investors by promoting the company as engaging in legitimate international schemes for carbon neutralization and the sale of carbon credits, taking advantage of the worldwide trend for renewable energy sources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said a filing by Hsinchu prosecutors who conducted the investigation.

Couple convicted for carbon credits scam - Taipei Times

Headline Europe

Investigations by The Guardian and Die Zeit reveal that the world leading carbon offset certifier ;Vera has been running a $2 billion a year fraud.


The investigation found that:

• Only a handful of Verra’s rainforest projects showed evidence of deforestation reductions, according to two studies, with further analysis indicating that 94% of the credits had no benefit to the climate.
• The threat to forests had been overstated by about 400% on average for Verra projects, according to analysis of a 2022 University of Cambridge study.
• Gucci, Salesforce, BHP, Shell, easyJet, Leon and the band Pearl Jam were among dozens of companies and organisations that have bought rainforest offsets approved by Verra for environmental claims.
• Human rights issues are a serious concern in at least one of the offsetting projects. The Guardian visited a flagship project in Peru, and was shown videos that residents said showed their homes being cut down with chainsaws and ropes by park guards and police. They spoke of forced evictions and tensions with park authorities.

Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless, analysis shows | Carbon offsetting | The Guardian

All these allegations are less than a year old Carbon offsetting began sometime after the Montreal Protocol was established in 1989 . What we have is more than 40 years of fraud and corruption.

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