Holcim files lawsuit over EUA theft, Romania

Holcim has filed a lawsuit against Romania’s carbon registry for damages relating to EUR1m allowances that were stolen from the company in a hacking attack in 2010, Reuters reports.

The company said it had filed a EUR1m claim in November 2011m in time to beat a one-year deadline imposed by Romanian law. "We've filed a claim with Romania's national environmental protection agency," a spokesman with the company told Point Carbon News, adding that the company might revise the claimed amount of compensation as the case progresses.

In November 2010, hackers managed to obtain details to steal 1.6m EUAs and sell them to participants in Europe’s cap-and-trade scheme. Around 600,000 of these were handed back to the company but 1m credits, then worth around EUR14.6m were traded many times over in the EU ETS.

In November 2010, hackers managed to extract a username and password from Holcim's holding account in the Romanian carbon registry, details that were used to steal 1.6 million EUAs and sell them to participants in Europe's cap-and-trade scheme.

Holcim said it was unable to tell how fast its case would proceed through the Romanian courts, as the country's police are still investigating the November 2010 theft.

Last year a court in Brussels rejected a lawsuit supported by Holcim that would have forced the EU Commission to name companies in possession of stolen EUAs, ruling that such data is confidential.