Shell Company

A shell company is a legally incorporated company, entered in the register, but with no real economic activity. It is not unlawful in itself, as many structures are dormant for legitimate reasons, but it is the standard tool of fake supplier fraud, credit diversion and money laundering. The useful signals are never the registration extract alone, which will be perfectly in order, but their combination: recent incorporation, no accounts filed, minimal capital, a registered address shared by dozens of companies, a very broad corporate purpose, a director already involved in several comparable structures.