Shells, shams & public shenanigans

Shell companies have no physical presence or actual business operations, but are paper corporations that have only one purpose: to facilitate one or more transactions and then eventually dissolve. We explore how corrupt politicians and civil servants misuse shell entities to steal taxpayer funds.

Shells: An overview

Shell companies are paper companies with no "meat," no substance. They're often typically associated with fraud, embezzlement and public corruption crimes. Shells require sophistication and planning not generally present in most fraud schemes such as check tampering, expense reimbursement or payroll schemes.

Shell companies do have a number of legitimate business reasons such as "holding" non-physical assets, including copyrights, trademarks, patents and other intellectual property. Businesses also use them as accounting mechanisms to organize assets. For example, many real estate investment funds own multiple properties, but they, in turn, own the holding companies that physically own each individual property.

Crime and shells