Planet Killers: The Prince of Carbon

The “Planet Killers” team have been granted exclusive access to the environmental crime unit of Interpol. This film is the inside story on the hunt for Cyril Astruc, the “Prince of Carbon”. 

Cyril Astruc has been a fugitive from justice for nearly ten years, on the run from both the French authorities and Interpol. He has an international arrest warrant for fraud and money laundering. 

The so-called “Prince of Carbon” masterminded a huge carbon quota fraud, which misappropriated five billion Euros from European state coffers. This money had been earmarked to fight climate change and CO2 emissions, and the fraud meant that the carbon exchange system no longer had any effect in ecological terms. 

From Israel to Belgium via the United States, Cyril Astruc slipped through the net of the investigators. He is a colourful character, reminiscent of Frank Abagnale (“Catch me if you can”), whose sophisticated scam laundered money through dozens, if not hundreds of bogus companies. The story of the Prince of Carbon is told by judges, by French, Belgian, Israeli investigators and the Interpol officers who work together to hunt him down.