The warring conmen at the heart of a €5bn carbon scam

Daphne and other scammers’ pillaging of Europe’s carbon market constitutes what the media have called “the fraud of the century” – billions of euros were stolen in a matter of months. The shadowy scheme attracted established crime rings and amateur hucksters alike, many of whom knew one another. Its web reached the boxing rings of Las Vegas, the offices of Germany’s biggest bank, the caves along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was hiding and the gilded restaurants of Paris. It pulled in a playboy demi-celebrity, an Afghan refugee, a flashy street hustler, an immaculate businessman who hobnobbed with the queen of England, the doyenne of Marseille’s underground and a man some people called The Brain.

The Brain’s real name is Grégory Zaoui, and he claims that the entire scam was his idea. Daphne, he says, gets far too much credit for his role in ripping off the carbon market.

Zaoui agreed to meet me in Paris last May, at a restaurant in one of the city’s most luxurious hotels, the Lutetia, where a Coca-Cola costs €12 and an army of valets swarm the entrance. He wanted to set the record straight about his and Daphne’s respective roles in Europe’s carbon fraud. Until now, he told me, no one had truly understood the relationship between them.

“He is the prince,” Zaoui told me. “But I am the king.”