Green market ripe for security fraud, warn experts

FRAUD and market abuse among European "green" projects is set to grow unless controls and systems that protect them are strengthened, a new report has warned.

Accountancy firm Price- waterhouseCoopers (PWC) said programmes such as the $120 billion (73.8bn) EU Trading Scheme, which covers half of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions, are attracting the serious attention of professional criminals. Recently a "phishing" scam and cyber attacks caused the theft of €45m from several companies and the closure of national carbon registries across the EU.

Richard Neave, forensic services director at PWC in Scotland, said: "In recent months there has been a surge in frauds with a green element. Often this is down to a lack of mature information security policies and controls. Fraudsters are using the latest techniques to attack weak points in the system, but these are essentially old frauds applied to new markets."

PWC said weak information security measures subject to phishing scams - on-line exercises in illicit information gathering - were a "classic" entry point for fraudsters. PWC recently conducted a test for a multinational client which found more than 2,000 employees clicked though to a fake internet page.

Neave said: "Companies need to apply the same diligence to their sustainable business activities as they do to their core financial reporting and controls."