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According to [1],

> In 2008 and 2009, multiple groups of fraudsters took advantage of differing tax rules in different EU countries to buy and sell carbon credits, or permission to emit carbon dioxide, on exchanges in Europe. The scammers would buy the credits in a country with no value-added tax, and quickly sell them in France or other countries that did charge VAT.

> Stephane Alzraa, 38, was extradited from Israel following a request by French authorities.

> Aknin remains in Israel, where he is fighting extradition

This 39 year old Michael Aknin seems to fit the story...

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/trial-starts-for-franco-israel...

Israel does not necessarily extradite for financial fraud, that is why Aknin is fighting it in court. There are many legal maneuvers available in the Israeli court system.
Israel refuses to extradite child rapists; hardly surprising that they'd refuse to give up mere fraudsters.
I think it's Cyril Astruc. His parents fit the job descriptions in the article: tailor and teacher.
Absolutely. Also searching for his name shows pictures that perfectly fit the physical description and Vanity Fair link in the article.

Of course, it could just be one of his many pseudonyms ;)

Bingo. "He dressed in blazers cut from blue velvet or embroidered with shimmering brocade flowers. He liked to wear a diamond-encrusted Chopard sun pendant on his partially bared chest."

https://image-uniservice.linternaute.com/image/450/105809602...

Where / what are these "exchanges" in Europe? examples ?
They are mentioned many times in the article. Powernext and Bluenext.
Is that fraud or just arbitrage?
If you read the article, it's fraud.

They ran the exact same fraud as had been run on cell phones.

> Criminals imported phones from other EU countries, sold them to consumers with VAT tacked on, pocketed the tax, and disappeared before anyone was the wiser. Or they used carousel schemes, pretending to sell phones through a chain of businesses created for the express purpose of fraud and requesting VAT reimbursements from governments at each point of sale.

> Is that fraud or just arbitrage?

It's VAT fraud, so literally tax fraud.

They pocketed the sales tax and then never sent it to the government.
Funny that he is now into… cryptocurrencies. The man has experience with bogus markets.
> The way the system was supposed to work was simple enough: The EU would set an annual cap on its overall emissions, then issue various emitters a certain number of EU allowances. Each EUA would entitle its holder to emit one ton of carbon.

I'm a serial pirate and I'll only do worse next year. Can you pay me to pirate a bit less next year, while giving nothing to those that never pirated at all?

It’s not really comparable because the pollution was being generated as a byproduct of a presumably useful service or industry. This puts polluters under a regulatory limit that didn’t exist before, gives the time to adjust while also providing an early incentive to decarbonise sooner rather than later (they can sell the credits they didn’t need to use).
Yes that is totally comparable. After all, those emitters didn't do anything of use to anyone. It's especially bad when you consider that there countries that have successfully prevented this industrial crime: Afghanistan, Chad, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Laos...
You forgot China and the US. Now your list is not that impressive, is it?
> I should say here that Gustav Daphne is a pseudonym. He remains a wanted man in France, so when I traveled to meet with him at his gated villa in Tel Aviv, he agreed to speak on the condition that I not use his name—any of his names.

This caught my attention and I decided to do some sleuthing to see how hard it would be to figure out the real name and... there's dozens of people that might fit the description [1]. The cynic in me notes that they all seem to have dogs that the journalist just has to write, I guess as some sort of PR technique via emotional hook.

> He made contacts and built extensive networks of people willing to help him import and export fake goods, and he traveled around the world despite the risk it carried.

Took quite a turn towards the end. He didn't turn over a new leaf, at all.

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/06/03/t... (https://archive.ph/yG1dN)

I'd love to listen to a podcast about this.

When I saw "fraud of the century" I thought it was the OneCoin scam (Ruja Ignatova, "The Crypto Queen"). BBC did a very detailed investigative podcast about that one: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/uj5nz-a0b8a/The-Missi...

I was thinking of Wirecard. There's an awful lot of centry-level financial fraud going around right now.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/how-the-bigges...

Wirecard was €1.9 billion. The cum-ex trading scandal siphoned up to €55 billion. My lawyer went to school with one of the major guys involved.

https://theconversation.com/the-robbery-of-the-century-the-c...

> He bought her a Bugatti in green, like her eyes.

> The problem was that he lacked capital. He needed more than the 80,000 euros he’d received from El Ghazouani.

A Bugatti is like a few million dollars no? This discrepancy doesn't make sense to me, if he already had the money on that scale why did a few hundred thousand euros of investment matter so desperately?

> A Bugatti is like a few million dollars no?

Back then when they were new it was more like 800k.

But yeah, this part stood out for me as well. My guess is he either financed the car, or didn't pay for it at all (just have it repo'd, you'd still have impressed the girl). Or the whole story is fake, you never know with these kind of serial scammers, their whole life is a lie.

Lombard credit on fake accounting?
Netflix has a great documentary about this story. The french name is « les rois de l’arnaque ».
A mini-series was also recently released: Of Money and Blood.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzlimhCdkA

Based on Fabrice Arfi's book of the same name. He works at Mediapart, a french journal that outed many state scandals. He's also one of the four french members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Lords of Scam is the English title.
Like FTX/SBF, this person would have probably become an accomplished businessman, if his criminal mind wasn't in his way. Fascinating to read how crafty those people in exploiting any gaps where potential profits could be made. They are like is financial "hackers" that can segfault some .org.
It seems to have been pretty basic VAT fraud. Nothing smart or havky about that. Happens dozens of times every day at various scales. And each and every time it is just plain old tax fraud.
Like SBF?
People who say this usually come from a place of privilege. They profoundly misunderstand how the world works and the significant role of luck. If these people hadn't cheated, they would be broke and struggling to make ends meet. I never met anyone in my life who made any serious money without some kind of cheating or fraud or unethical conduct either by them or their ancestors.
> criminal mind

Good white-hat hacking (tax|legal|financial|computer) also requires a criminal mind I believe!!! Bending or twisting rules and knowing which rules to break! Criminality is dependent on your context. Risk/reward is a key feature of economics.

My personal word for a drug-dealer is entrepreneur.

I don't know if it's available outside France. But Netflix has made a documentary in french about Marco Mouly "Les Rois de l'arnaque" / "Kings of the scam". The least we can say is that he's a real piece of work. Most of the people involved are such caricatures of sephard that you wouldn't put them in a work of fiction. The man is a clown, boasts, lies, but at some point you can also see the fear in his eyes when his daughter is 15 minutes late because he fears for the lives of his loved ones. It's really the story of a couple of small-time VAT fraudsters from a poor Parisian suburb who stumbled onto something way too big for them and got caught out by some real gangsters.
What, praytell, is a caricature of a sephard?
So when does Netflix make a limited series based on this.
I think they already did in 2021 called "Lords of Scam".
"Lords of Scam" (2021) Original title: "Les rois de l'arnaque" | 1h 45m | Documentary

https://www.netflix.com/title/81092697#

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15711402/

This was a fascinating and well-written read. Thanks for submitting it!
Wow.. that is so crazy. Thank you for the good read