* Italy says 267,991 EUAs were stolen on Nov. 24
* Permits transferred to Liechtenstein, Britain
LONDON, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Italy's environment ministry said it had tracked the transfer of almost 270,000 stolen European Union carbon permits to Liechtenstein and Britain, worth about 39.4 million euros ($53.8 million) at today's prices.
"We confirm that 267,991 allowances were stolen on Nov. 24. The Italian police is still investigating (the) event," Traiano Bertollini, a ministry spokesman, told Reuters on Tuesday. Hackers copied the password of a registry account holder and accessed the registry, he added, declining to name the account holder.
The permits were transferred to another Italian account, then to the Liechtenstein registry and finally to the UK registry, Bertollini said.
The Italian theft took place months before a widespread attack on registries across Europe last month in which millions of permits were stolen. As a result, the EU's spot carbon market ground to a halt for over two weeks.
Emissions registries administer and transfer carbon permits called EU allowances (EUAs), which are traded under the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).
The scheme caps the emissions of heavy industries such as cement and steel companies. They can buy permits to cover excess emissions or sell them when they reduce their emissions.
On Monday Austria said it had also tracked stolen permits from its registry to Liechtenstein and Sweden.
Last week, five national emissions registries reopened. Only one exchange has reopened, however, and trading activity is scant as traders fear getting stuck with any unidentified stolen permits still in circulation.
Bertollini added that on Dec. 2 last year, 99,797 of the missing EUAs were found in an Italian account and locked by the Italian registry administrator, awaiting the result of the investigation by the Italian authorities.
The Italian registry suspended the activities of the Italian accounts involved as soon as it was alerted to the incident, he said.
On Friday, spot exchange BlueNext released a list of permits it was trying to filter out, originating from Greece, Romania, the Czech Republic and Italy.
The Italian registry is working with the EU Commission on tougher security measures before it reopens, Bertollini said.
"(Its) reactivation (...) will be announced through the Commission website 24 hours in advance," he added.
Last December, the Romanian subsidiary of cement company Holcim reported 1.6 million permits went missing from its Romanian registry account. The firm traced 600,000 permits but 1 million are still unaccounted for.
(Reporting by Nina Chestney and Svetlana Kovalyova in Milan; Editing by Jane Baird)