Trust and Corporate Services

• Enablers may establish and administer shell companies with nominee directors and fictitious shareholders.
• Legal, administrative, and compliance assistance can mask true beneficial owners and complicate AML investigations.

• Offer dormant shelf companies with an established incorporation date, enabling criminals to project a longer operating history and bypass extended due diligence.
• Provide nominee directors or employees, obscuring beneficial ownership and hindering AML investigations.

• Criminals exploit these services to form shell companies designed for brief usage, conducting illicit transactions and dissolving the entities once funds are moved.
• Use of nominee directors and layered structures masks beneficial ownership, hindering investigators seeking to trace assets after dissolution.

• Facilitates the establishment and administration of multiple corporate entities and trusts across different jurisdictions, enabling criminals to layer ownership and conceal their identities.
• Providers may offer nominee director or shareholder services, further obscuring beneficial ownership from regulators and financial institutions.

• Criminals or complicit intermediaries use these services to form shell companies or trusts under nominee ownership, masking the real beneficiary.
• Trustees, nominee directors, or shareholder arrangements add extra layers that obscure beneficial ownership, impeding due diligence.

• Providers can establish multiple layered corporate entities, making beneficial ownership difficult to trace.
• Nominee directors or trustees may be used to shield the true owner from official records and inquiries.

• Formation of shell companies or trusts to hold real estate assets, concealing the actual owners behind complex legal structures.
• Layering real estate ownership across multiple entities or jurisdictions hinders transparency, enabling illicit fund flows via property acquisitions or flips.

• Allow the formation of shell or front companies that can receive and disguise illicit funds under inflated project costs or subcontracting arrangements.
• Enable layering by obscuring beneficial ownership through nominee directors, multi-jurisdictional structures, and complex corporate setups associated with construction deals.

• Enable the creation of layered ownership structures or shell entities to hold high-cash-flow real estate, concealing true beneficiaries.
• Provide a complex corporate framework that masks criminal involvement and hinders investigative traceability.

• Criminals set up trusts or corporate vehicles to obscure beneficial ownership of foreign properties.
• Nominee directors and intricate layering hamper authorities’ attempts to link the real owner to the laundered assets.

• Criminals establish shell companies through these services, listing them as property owners or landlords to hide beneficial ownership.
• Fictitious rental income is then funneled through these corporate entities, complicating AML inquiries into the actual source of the funds.

• Criminals can establish shell companies or trusts to act as the property buyer, concealing true beneficial ownership.
• Complex corporate structures impede investigators from tracing the cash used for real estate acquisitions, reducing transparency and AML oversight.

• Falsification of incorporation documents and corporate filings to conceal actual ownership and control of entities.
• Forged board resolutions or shareholder agreements facilitate unauthorized asset transfers without immediate detection.

• Enable criminals to form or acquire companies and trusts with layered ownership structures, obscuring ultimate beneficial ownership.
• Provide administrative and management assistance for business operations used to commingle illicit funds with legitimate revenue streams.
• Facilitate M&A processes, where purchase prices can be overstated or understated, masking the true source and volume of funds.

• Enable formation and administration of fictional corporate structures for purported call-center operations, concealing the true owners and activity.
• Provide nominee arrangements and corporate oversight that help legitimize sham contracts and invoices used to disguise illicit revenue.

• Offenders exploit corporate formation and administration offerings to register fictitious entities with complex ownership structures, masking beneficial owners.
• These services help evade scrutiny by layering control under multiple nominees and jurisdictions, facilitating the fraudulent consulting façade.

• Establish layered corporate or trust structures to register farmland or agribusinesses, distancing actual beneficial owners from scrutiny.
• Provide nominee roles or directorships that shield the ultimate sources of capital used to purchase and operate farmland.

• Enable the formation and administration of entertainment-focused front entities with layered ownership structures, concealing true beneficiaries behind nominee directors or trustees.
• Facilitate complex corporate arrangements across multiple jurisdictions, hindering law enforcement’s ability to link illegal funds to their origin.

• Provide the legal framework for establishing complex structures that can obscure beneficial ownership or mask flows of illicit funds.
• Criminals exploit these arrangements to file deceptive tax returns that hide actual income or assets.
• By exploiting trusts or shell corporations, they may claim fictitious tax exemptions or reduced taxable income.

• Forged or altered documentation obscures the real beneficial owners when forming legal entities or trusts.
• These structures facilitate further account openings and asset holdings under assumed identities, hindering attempts to trace true ownership.

• Complex legal structures and nominee arrangements can be created to obscure the true ownership of sports clubs.
• Such layering impedes investigators from identifying ultimate beneficiaries and tracing the criminal origin of funds funneled into the club.

• Criminals establish shell or front companies in multiple jurisdictions, serving as importers, exporters, or intermediaries to conceal true ownership.
• These legal arrangements facilitate advanced layering of transactions, making trade routes, participants, and financial flows harder to trace.

• Criminals form shell or cover companies to issue invoices for nonexistent goods or services.
• These corporate entities obscure true ownership and transaction flows, complicating investigations into origin of funds.

• Criminals establish multiple legal entities and trust arrangements to layer money and conceal ultimate beneficiaries under professional secrecy.
• Professionals managing these structures often unknowingly perpetuate opacity by citing confidentiality clauses.

• Facilitate creation of layered corporate structures and trusts, enabling criminals to obscure ultimate beneficial owners when injecting illicit capital into legitimate businesses.
• Nominee directorships and complex governance arrangements conceal the true source of funds, allowing launderers to blend illicit money with legitimate revenues.

• Criminals may designate proxies as official trustees or corporate directors, obscuring the real beneficial owners behind legal structures.
• By interposing these proxy entities, illicit proceeds can be controlled without revealing the ultimate individual in charge, hindering AML transparency.

• Criminals establish and manage multiple corporate entities or trusts, cycling funds among these structures to disguise the true origin of money.
• Repeated inter-company transfers obscure beneficial ownership, making the financial trail appear legitimate while hampering investigations.

• Criminals can establish or maintain front companies through these services, falsely claiming legitimate commercial operations or purposes.
• By presenting fabricated corporate documentation or business activities, they obscure the true illicit origin or destination of funds, deceiving financial institutions and regulators about the transaction rationale.

• Criminals form and administer shell companies in FTZs to obscure beneficial owners.
• Nominee structures and limited transparency facilitate under- or over-invoicing and repeated trade transactions, catering to complex layering schemes.

• Criminals can incorporate companies that issue bearer shares, bypassing formal ownership disclosure requirements.
• Complex corporate structures mask the identity of ultimate beneficiaries, obstructing AML efforts when dealing with bearer instruments.

• Criminals establish layered corporate or trust structures for arbitration participants, concealing ownership behind nominees and complex formations.
• This disguises the true origin of illicit funds fueling or resulting from staged arbitration, limiting transparency for law enforcement or financial institutions.

• Smugglers establish front companies to legitimize cash flows from contraband cigarette sales, mixing them with nominal business activities.
• Complex corporate structures and nominee arrangements obscure the beneficial owners, thwarting direct links to smuggling profits and hindering asset tracing.

• Offenders establish shell or front companies to receive and channel protection money, hiding the true beneficial owners behind corporate structures. • This corporate layering misrepresents extorted income as legitimate revenue, complicating AML efforts and obscuring illicit fund flows.

• Formation and management of corporate entities enable criminals to shift liabilities or record fictitious revenues, complicating detection of actual money flows.
• Maintaining business records on behalf of these entities can include falsifying or omitting transactions, reinforcing the manipulated financial narrative.

• By forming and managing multiple interconnected entities, criminals can shift expenses or inflate revenues across corporate structures, complicating oversight.
• These services enable misrepresentation of accruals through intercompany transactions and nominee arrangements, making it harder for authorities to detect illicit fund movements.

• Establishing trusts, shell, or shelf companies helps obscure the identities and beneficial ownership of politically exposed persons (PEPs).
• Nominee structures or layered corporate entities complicate AML due diligence, impeding clear visibility into illicit funds’ origins.

• Enable the formation of complex corporate or trust structures, allowing corrupt officials to mask beneficial ownership or funnel misappropriated government funds.
• Nominee directors and multiple layered entities hinder transparency and complicate AML investigations.

• Facilitate the establishment of shell nonprofit or lobbying entities that appear legitimate on paper but exist primarily to collect and disburse illicit funds allegedly in support of political campaigns.
• Obscure actual donor identities through complex shareholding or trust arrangements, making it difficult for authorities to trace funding sources and enforce campaign finance regulations.

• Facilitates the creation and administration of front or shell companies used to commingle illegal revenues with lawful business activities.
• Nominee shareholders or directors obscure the true beneficial owners, complicating AML inquiries and enabling further layering of funds derived from environmental crimes.

• Enable the formation and management of front or shell companies (e.g., massage businesses, bars) to co-mingle illicit proceeds of forced labor or sexual exploitation with lawful revenue.
• Obscure the true owners via complex corporate structures, hindering authorities’ ability to link proceeds to trafficking or exploitation.

• Facilitates the formation of shell or front entities that appear legitimate yet conceal criminal control and ownership.
• Allows forced labor profits to be recorded as operating income or false payroll within corporate structures, complicating efforts to trace funds back to illegal labor practices.

• Form and administer shell or front entities, shielding traffickers’ identities behind complex legal structures.
• Manage corporate vehicles that can receive income from child exploitation, presenting them as legitimate business proceeds.

• Formation of front companies with nominal business operations to hold or move smuggling proceeds.
• False directorships and opaque ownership structures obscure the true beneficiaries, facilitating layering and evading scrutiny.

• Criminals leverage these services to establish and manage corporate entities or trusts that obscure the actual owners of illicit funds.
• Complex corporate layering across multiple jurisdictions limits transparency, frustrating efforts to trace beneficial ownership.

• Specialized fiduciary structures enable pooling of funds from undisclosed participants as alleged 'foreign investments.'
• Layered trusts and corporate vehicles conceal beneficial owners, falsely portraying illicit capital inflows as legitimate foreign funding.

• Provide formation and management of corporate entities or trusts, enabling criminals to establish layered ownership structures that obscure beneficial ownership.
• Assist in creating shell or nominee arrangements, reducing transparency and making it more difficult for authorities to trace illicit funds.

• Establish and administer trusts or corporate vehicles in jurisdictions with minimal disclosure requirements, making it harder to trace true beneficial ownership.
• Structure multiple layers of ownership entities that obscure the source of funds and facilitate offshore transfers away from regulatory scrutiny.

• Set up multiple small entities or “mini umbrella companies,” each with minimal stated employees, to skirt regulatory or tax thresholds.
• Fragment real payroll data across shell corporations, concealing ownership and inflating payroll costs to launder funds.

• Facilitates the establishment of complex corporate structures or shell entities, masking beneficial ownership in cross-border trade deals.
• These shell companies are then used in fictitious trade transactions, adding extra layers of opacity to illicit fund flows.

• Criminals can form multiple corporate entities that appear to be distinct bidders but are actually controlled by the same perpetrators.
• Nominee director or shareholder arrangements conceal real ownership, enabling collusive tendering across seemingly independent firms.

• Enable repeated changes to beneficial owners or controllers across trust or corporate entities, complicating efforts to identify the true owner.
• Facilitate the use of nominee directors or shareholders, further obscuring beneficial ownership.
• Provide secrecy in some jurisdictions lacking transparent and up-to-date beneficial ownership requirements.

• Nominee directors, trustees, or corporate entities can be formed and substituted on securities accounts, making it difficult to pinpoint the real controllers.
• Layered corporate structures or trusts obscure beneficial ownership, allowing criminals to rotate official account holders repeatedly.

• Criminals exploit these services to set up trusts with opaque or frequently changing beneficiary information, thwarting beneficial ownership transparency.
• Providers can assist in forming trusts in secrecy-friendly jurisdictions, making it difficult for authorities to link funds to the true controller.

• Criminals establish or administer trusts and corporate entities to act as policyholders or beneficiaries, masking true ownership.
• By repeatedly shifting these entities, they create additional layers of complexity, frustrating AML and legal inquiries.

• Criminals may collude with insiders to modify corporate ledgers or official statements, hiding the true nature of financial activities.
• Altered records frustrate investigators’ efforts to identify beneficial owners or follow the actual flow of funds within corporate entities.

• Criminals may conduct private share transfers or secretly change beneficial ownership within corporate structures without updating official records.
• By keeping agreements informal and off-the-record, they maintain de facto control while masking their involvement from regulators and bypassing KYC requirements.

• Facilitates the formation and maintenance of nominal or shell companies used to issue or receive overbilled service invoices.
• Providers can set up complex corporate structures with nominee directors or layered ownership, hampering beneficial owner identification.
• This arrangement supports the inflating or falsifying of contract values while adding legitimacy to sham entities.

• Criminals create or manage shell consulting entities through corporate and trust arrangements, hiding the true beneficial owners behind complex structures.
• These layers of legal entities make it difficult for authorities to trace the origin of funds, enabling illicit proceeds to be laundered under the guise of legitimate consulting revenue.

• Criminals may establish or manage betting operations via complex corporate structures or nominee arrangements to hide beneficial ownership.
• Such opacity facilitates layering of illicit funds through the licensed betting shop, making detection of criminal control more difficult.

• Criminals establish shell corporations or trusts to act as the official bidder at auctions, masking true beneficial owners.
• These structures enable layered ownership, making it difficult for authorities to trace illicit capital injected into real estate acquisitions.
• Combined with repeated auction flips, corporate vehicles further disguise and integrate criminal funds into the legitimate financial system.

• Facilitates the formation of special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) that layer proceeds from carbon credit deals across multiple jurisdictions.
• Complex corporate structures hinder identification of ultimate beneficial owners, complicating AML investigations.

• Perpetrators establish shell corporations or trust vehicles under this service to hide the true beneficial owners before depositing large volumes of illicit funds.
• Professional intermediaries maintain opaque corporate structures and open additional accounts, preventing clear linkage to the ultimate owner.
• These arrangements are interwoven with asset management deposits, making it more difficult for regulators and auditors to track illicit proceeds.

• Facilitate remote establishment and administration of intangible legal entities, enabling criminals to incorporate virtual companies with minimal physical presence.
• Allow the use of nominee directors and complex corporate structures, concealing real beneficial owners behind multiple layers.

• Criminals form or manage shell entities and nominee structures to camouflage the signatories of sponsorship or image licensing contracts, making it difficult for authorities to identify the true owners of the funds.
• These structures mask beneficial ownership when channeling inflated or fictitious image rights fees, hampering transparency in the sports sector.

• Facilitates the formation and management of intricate corporate vehicles, enabling layered ownership arrangements and nominee appointments.
• Providers may operate across multiple jurisdictions with minimal disclosure, obscuring ultimate beneficial owners and impeding AML investigations.

• Criminals form shell companies and appoint nominee directors through these services to stage fictitious M&A transactions, obscuring the true ownership structure.
• Ongoing corporate management under the guise of legitimate administration enables the layering of illicit funds across multiple jurisdictions, making it difficult for authorities to trace beneficial ownership.

• Facilitates creation and maintenance of multiple corporate vehicles that obscure relationships among related entities.
• Enables criminals to route funds among nominally distinct companies, making inflated or under-reported inter-company charges harder to trace.

• Allow the formation of layered legal entities or front companies, shielding sanctioned owners behind nominee arrangements.
• Provide fiduciary oversight and administration that can hide true beneficial ownership from authorities.

• Narcotics proceeds are funneled through corporate structures that appear legitimate, obscuring beneficial ownership behind trusts or layered corporate entities.
• Providers assist in forming and maintaining shell or front companies, enabling criminals to distance themselves from the illicit origins of funds and complicate investigations.

• Facilitate the creation and administration of shell or front companies, concealing illicit activities behind seemingly legitimate corporate structures.
• Provide mechanisms to obscure beneficial ownership, allowing criminals to disguise the true purpose of payments for precursor chemicals and complicate AML investigations.

• Enable creation and maintenance of shell or front companies to hide beneficial ownership of illicit funds.
• Service providers add layers of legitimacy, making it more difficult for authorities to uncover the criminal source of revenue from commodity trafficking.

• By forming shell or front companies, perpetrators conceal ownership and produce fake invoices or documents to justify incoming payments.
• These structures mask the true origins of fraud proceeds, complicating AML inquiries into beneficial ownership.

• Criminals establish shell or nominee-controlled companies through these services to submit falsified applications for government relief funds.
• Nominee directors and obscured ownership hamper detection efforts, facilitating subsequent layering or commingling of disbursed funds.

• Used to set up shell companies or complex corporate structures that falsely qualify for relief programs.
• Nominee directors and opaque beneficial ownership arrangements disguise true control, enabling repeated or fraudulent applications for relief funds.

• Enable criminals to rapidly establish multiple shell or front companies across jurisdictions, creating complex ownership structures that obscure beneficial owners and the flow of funds.
• Provide corporate management and administration to facilitate repeated VAT claims under different legal entities, making it harder to trace actual business operations.

• Let fraudsters set up multiple or layered agribusiness entities to file separate or duplicate subsidy claims.
• Use nominee structures or shell companies to conceal true ownership while siphoning off fraudulent government payments.

• Criminals establish shell or front entities under professional service providers to present a veneer of legitimacy for the ‘investment’ firm.
• Nominee directors and layered corporate structures conceal the true operators of the Ponzi scheme, hindering effective tracing of illicit funds.

• Criminals establish shell or front companies purportedly involved in logging, fishing, or waste management, obscuring beneficial ownership.
• Nominee directors or trustees enable layering of illicit funds from environmental crimes, complicating AML efforts.

• Enables the formation of shell entities with opaque ownership to receive, hold, and transfer proceeds from illegal logging.
• Complex corporate structures obscure the actual beneficiaries, impeding investigations into the flow of timber-related illicit funds.

• The formation and administration of shell or front companies enable traffickers to obscure the source of wildlife trafficking proceeds.
• Layering funds through these entities conceals beneficial ownership, frustrating AML investigations.

• Assist in creating shell or front companies that mask beneficial ownership and real revenue flows.
• Layer corporate structures to reclassify or shift income, hindering authorities’ attempts to track legitimate taxable sums.

• Facilitate the establishment of shell or front companies to obscure beneficial owners and real employee structures, supporting underreporting of wages.
• Provide corporate administration with minimal oversight or nominal directorships, hiding fraudulent payroll and tax practices.

• Criminals establish shell or dummy entities, enabling fictitious or exaggerated business activities that underpin forged tax rebate claims.
• Nominee directors or hiding true beneficiaries help obscure real beneficiaries of inflated refunds, complicating detection.

• Criminals utilize these services to set up and administer trusts or corporate entities through separate offices or teams.
• Each team typically handles narrow tasks, such as nominee management or registered agent services, without insight into wider financial flows or other parallel entities, bolstering the information silo.