A growing concern about pollution is characterizing public administrations, institutions,
companies and citizens. In particular, despite the existence of several ‘green-crimes’, one of them
is getting wide attention due to its impact on the global warming: CO2 carbon-trading crime. In
this respect, since 2009 several cases of embezzlement using the EU’s carbon-trading scheme
were reported causing hundreds of millions of damages/losses. Consequentially, legitimate
questions about the efficacy of the legal framework within which the CO2 carbon-trading crime
is regulated were asked. In that respect, this study conducted a review of the literature on this
crime in order to shed a light on its potential connection with the perceived level of corruption in
the public procurement. Indeed, despite the adoption of strict legal norms as a consequence of the
Paris agreement, corruption can have a detrimental effect on their applicability. The findings
revealed that several researches identified an existing connection between the so called ‘shadoweconomy’,
which is characterized by a systematized corruption at an institutional level, and the
registered rate of CO2-emissions. This evidence needs to be further explored in future studies to
identify areas of improvement for criminal laws targeting corruption as, indeed, one of the main
threats to the effective implementation of green policies.