Dirty green money: the systemic fraud of the ESG investing industry

Abstract This article presents the first criminological holdings-level analysis of the financed emissions, carbon intensity, and capital flows of “green” investment funds. It empirically demonstrates that ESG funds with the EU’s highest sustainability classification are drastically more carbon-intensive than non-ESG funds, and systematically channel capital toward the most carbon-intensive companies and sectors in even greater levels of concentration. The data presented reveals a phenomenon that goes beyond mere greenwashing. Drawing on an interdisciplinary conceptual framework, the article argues that the EU’s ESG investing industry is systemically fraudulent, with a regulatory regime that produces and legally sanctions misleading sustainability claims which operate in a juridical vacuum, thereby demanding a new criminological conception of fraud suitable to the age of financialised stakeholder capitalism.