Many firms promise to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but only few of them allow external auditors to scrutinize their environmental performance. Contrary to common expectations, the set of firms agreeing to environmental audits is quite heterogeneous, including relatively clean firms and heavy polluters alike. To explain variation in firms’ auditing behavior, we argue that firms can use their decision to submit to audits as a signal to government to obtain preferential treatment—despite current emission levels. Governments, on their part, have incentives to respond to the promise of lower emissions at home by helping to facilitate moving the dirty parts of production abroad. We study this form of mutually beneficial emissions outsourcing in the context of the U.S. EXIM bank. Relying on more than 3,500 firms’ auditing data from the Carbon Disclosure Project over the last decade (2010-2019), we examine whether Fortune 500 firms which agree to have their environmental performance audited are more likely to obtain loans and guarantees from the U.S. EXIM bank that those that do. Our findings resonate with concerns that firms can find ways to evade (environmental) regulations such that local emission reductions in the U.S. are offset by increased emissions abroad.