Investigators at the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) are to pose as carbon traders as part of efforts to catch criminals targeting the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) following the high-profile theft of £28m of EU allowances in a cyber attack in January.

A spokesman from SOCA told BusinessGreen it is carrying out a number of investigations in partnership with law enforcement agency Europol and liaison officers across Europe to target UK criminals involved in three forms of ETS abuse: VAT fraud, EUA theft and money laundering.

While SOCA refused to provide specific details on active investigations, the spokesman confirmed operatives will be posing as carbon traders active in the ETS in order to identify thieves fraudulently operating as carbon traders. “This is just one of a range of covert tactics we are using to target and disrupt UK criminals involved in any form of abuse of the ETS,” he said.

Concerns have been raised about the level of protection offered to carbon traders after Czech firm Blackstone Global Ventures admitted 475,000 emissions allowances had been stolen from its national registry in January, prompting the EU Commission to ban all spot trading of carbon allowances until individual registries had proved their security works as it should.

The UK was in the first tranche of countries allowed to allowed ro reopen their national registries. However, the fraud sparked criticism from carbon traders who accused a number of member states of operating registries that failed to meet adequate cyber security standards, particularly in eastern European states.

SOCA says its investigations are aimed at preserving the integrity of the UK’s registry within the wider EU platform.

“Serious organised criminals tend not to operate in a vacuum, so while the UK registry shows every sign of being reasonably secure, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t UK criminals taking part in ETS crime abroad,” said the SOCA spokesman. “The UK is seen as being a secure place for carbon trading and we want it to remain that way, so we have to investigate how to keep it as clean as possible.”

Half the national registries involved in the EU ETS have now been sanctioned to restart spot trading since the EU shut down databases in mid-January. Austria and Poland were last week named as the latest member states to resume normal operations.

The latest additions take the number of registries which have restarted trading to 15, including Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, UK, Bulgaria and Ireland.