Private Eye, an investigative magazine based in London, reports:

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“CARBON emissions trading might be useless at tackling climate change but it is proving to be highly profitable for the financial engineers behind it – men like the godfather of pollution trading, an American called Richard Sandor, who was one of the founders of financial derivatives in the 1980s at junk bond trader Drexel Burnham Lambert.

It was at Drexel Burnham Lambert that Sandor pioneered the “collateral mortgage obligations” that eventually brought the financial markets to their knees. He was also architect of the first pollution permit trading scheme (in sulphur emissions) in the US in the 1990s [. . .] Sandor meanwhile has been a big mover behind plans for a mandatory trading system in the US that would see his company’s income multiply.”
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The Eye notes that the Exchange set up by Sandor and others made over £11 million ($17 million) and yet the company pays no tax on any of this profit as [quote] “Climate Exchange plc is registered in the tax haven of the Isle of Man, where, according to its accounts, “it is subject to tax at zero percent”

As the article concludes: [QUOTE]

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“This kind of tax planning requires plenty of carbon-intensive jetting off to board meetings in whichever countries the directors want their companies to be tax resident. As a Climate Exchange plc spokesman told the Eye: “They’re always travelling.” This might not do much for the planet but it’ll be good for business when airlines are forced into the trading scheme from 2012.”
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So why have governments around the world let people like Sandor – largely responsible for the derivatives that bought the world’s financial system to the brink of collapse – get away with paying no tax on the vat profits made from the trade in hot air?

Read the whole article at http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&issue=1258