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500 Police Raid Deutsche Bank Over Carbon Fraud

Green Mafia



Deutsche Bank co-chief executive Juergen Fitschen was drawn into a widening tax evasion probe linked to carbon trading at Germany’s biggest lender on Wednesday as police and tax inspectors raided its offices. Around 500 police and tax inspectors raided Deutsche Bank, arresting five staff in a probe linked to a tax scam involving the trading of carbon permits. --Edward Taylor, Reuters, 12 December 2012

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The European police agency Europol estimates VAT fraud has cost EU states an estimated 5 billion euros in lost tax revenue. Separately, Deutsche Bank is set to cut staff at its U.S. and European power and gas trading desks with up to 50 traders leaving the bank, and its global head of commodities, David Silbert, is also to leave. --Edward Taylor, Reuters, 12 December 2012 Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government won votes that will permit fracking to continue in Germany, saying the technique may help the country’s energy supply security. Merkel’s coalition government defeated motions from the Green Party and Left Party that called for banning hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, after the opposition argued the technique is harmful to the environment. There’s no reason to prohibit a technique that’s been used in Germany for many years without incidents, said Andreas Laemmel, a lawmaker with the Christian Democratic Union. “We need the technology and we need natural gas as a resource won domestically,” Laemmel said in parliament in Berlin before the vote. The U.K. government earlier today lifted a ban on shale-gas fracking. --Stefan Nicola, Bloomberg, 13 December 2012 Rising sea level has become an icon of global warming with claims that by 2100 many cities on the coast will face severe problems. In 2009 the Met Office, the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) and the Royal Society released a joint pre-Copenhagen Conference statement that included as one of its five main scientific points: “There is increasing evidence of continued and accelerating sea-level rises around the world.” What a difference a few years makes. There have been signs things are changing in the opposite direction from the statements made in 2009. It is early days, but there does appear to be a lowering in the rate of rise, contrary to the IPCC’s assessment and predictions. --David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 14 December 2012 A widespread belief that the world’s coral reefs face a calamitous future due to climate change is proving less resilient than the natural wonders themselves. Latest research findings blow away claim that reefs are doomed due to rising ocean acidification caused by the higher take-up of carbon dioxide in the seas. --Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 10 December 2012


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