As I explained in the column, this story momentarily startled me because I had extensively talked with people behind a clean cookstove project a couple of years ago, and the thought that the subjects of this indictment might be the same immediately came to mind. They were not, fortunately; I had no idea that CQC even existed until I received this information.
That was another weird, although probably not significant thing about this story: The first word I usually get about these kinds of things is through someone else's news article, which I use as a starting point to look up the original documentation and do other such due diligence as I need to in order to produce the original work my paper pays me for. In this instance, however, I learned about the story when the US Attorney's press release landed directly in my inbox. As I said, a little weird, and perhaps I should wonder about whose mailing lists I'm on, but probably not a mystery worth dwelling on.
I'm going to make it the topic of another column in the near future (and now that I think about it, I will probably piss off quite a few people by doing so), so I don't want to go off on a long tangent here, but this story has convinced me that voluntary carbon markets are a bad idea that should not exist. I think any advantages of voluntary markets can be built into compliance markets, without the innumerable pathways for fraud and greenwashing, and so that is the way governments should go. Fight me.
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