London, 31 January 2011

Some 300,000 EUAs were stolen from a Greek cement firm, taking the total missing to 3.1 million. The emissions permits, worth over €4 million ($5.5 million), were stolen by cyber criminals on 18 January from the Greek emissions registry account of cement maker Halyps, which is part of Italy’s Italcementi Group, the company said on Monday.

“We had about 300,000 permits stolen, but that’s just an initial estimate, the investigation is still ongoing. From what we know so far, we were the only Greek company that had permits stolen,” a company spokeswoman told Reuters.

The theft brings the total number of missing permits to 3.1 million, including 1.3 million stolen from accounts at the Czech registry, 1 million taken from cement maker Holcim's account at the Romanian registry and 488,000 plucked from a government account at Austria’s registry.

The total value of the permits reported stolen is estimated by Point Carbon News to be around €45 million, based on current market rates, or around 50 per cent more than an EU commission estimate of €30 million made on 20 January, when it first announced that Greece's registry was one of those hacked.

Europol, Interpol and EU member police departments reportedly thwarted efforts by Romania-based cyber criminals to transfer €28 million worth of stolen EUAs, the Wall Street Journal said this weekend, citing unnamed senior officials but giving no timeline.

"The hackers were very well organized and extremely hard to trace. For instance in Greece, they penetrated the server system of the University of Patras, using it as a Trojan horse using a Greek IP and then hit cement company Halyps," the official said.

"The hackers have been traced and identified. Arrests will be announced in the next few days, and their identities will be revealed,” he added.

Following reports of the thefts, the EU commission on 19 January imposed a ban on carbon transfers at the bloc’s 30 registries, effectively freezing the spot emissions trading market.

The commission said late on Friday that some registries may be able to reopen later this week after demonstrating minimum security requirements have been implemented.

Ends --

By Michael Szabo, Point Carbon

www.pointcarbon.com