The Australian Crime Commission is doing a new assessment of the potential for organised crime to target Australia’s emissions trading scheme as it works with the Department of Climate Change to minimise the risk.
But the chief executive of the commission, John Lawler, rejected assertions his organisation had issued any new findings about the possibility that organised crime would infiltrate the carbon trading scheme and denied it had described the market as a ”honeypot” for criminals.
The opposition climate change spokesman, Greg Hunt, said this week ”new warnings from the Australian Crime Commission about carbon credit fraud add further weight to the argument that a carbon tax is not in Australia’s best interests”.
The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, warned about the ”scope for scamming” presented by the scheme and also about the ”intrusive carbon cop” being set up to regulate and police it.
Mr Lawler said there was ”some risk that carbon credits could be used for money laundering purposes as they can be bought and traded using criminal proceeds to disguise the true origin of the funds … risks similar to other financial products which represent value such as securities and derivatives”.
He said that the commission had produced a discussion paper on the issue in 2008 and ”the overall level of risk assessed at that time was not high”.
The commission was ”undertaking an updated assessment on the potential exploitation by organised criminals of a domestic carbon trading scheme” as part of consultations with the Department of Climate Change.
He said allegations of fraud in the European Union scheme ”provide Australia with a distinct advantage in responding to potential exploitation”.
The government is setting up a clean energy regulator to administer and regulate the scheme and the Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, has said its tough penalties were designed to avoid the instances of fraud that had occurred in Europe.
