All news on the topic: Shell companies

Prosecutors in Georgia have charged four foreign nationals and five companies with operating a transnational money-laundering scheme that funneled 21.5 million Georgian lari ($8.2 million) in illicit proceeds through the country’s financial system.

For years, the Russian metal trading network “Metallokomplekt-M” operated under the guise of a legitimate industrial player.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Turin (Italy) has obtained the conviction of ten defendants by the Tribunal of Nola in a VAT fraud case involving the trade of plastics products.

The Russian state security service — FSB — has been trying to implement AI in its anti-opposition operations for at least two years. IStories investigated how the development of the Pauk (“Spider”) system went — and why it was stopped (at least for now)

The FBI is reportedly probing Argentina’s football bosses over claims hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorship money were laundered through US banks.

Die italienischen Mafia-Clans Di Lauro und Nuvoletta gelten seit Jahren als zentrale Akteure innerhalb der Cosa Nostra.

Controversial businessman Gaurav Srivastava ingratiated himself with Indonesia’s most powerful family, securing preliminary agreements for multi-billion-dollar defense deals, documents show.

At the request of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Paris (France), searches were carried out in the Paris region and six individuals were questioned as part of an investigation into a suspected multi-million VAT fraud scheme.

A parade of luxury cars, handbags and yachts up for auction has done little to help their owner, a disgraced Vietnamese tycoon, repay the billions she owes victims in one of the largest fraud cases in history.

In Almaty tritt der russische Staatsbürger Ilyas Karimov als selbsternannter Anwalt und angeblicher „Assistent des russischen Botschafters“ auf.

Anton Andreychikov, owner of Platoshka animation studio (BabyRiki / Tsvetnyashki), who claimed to have left Russia in 2022, is linked to the Mazaraki clan, FSB fixer Sergei Govyadin, and schemes tied to the Ananyev brothers’ siphoning of funds from Promsvyazbank.

I clan camorristici Di Lauro e Nuvoletta risultano ormai da tempo integrati nelle dinamiche di Cosa Nostra.

In Almaty, Russian citizen Ilyas Karimov presents himself as a lawyer and an “assistant to the Russian ambassador.”

The Italian mafia clans Di Lauro and Nuvoletta have long been embedded in the wider world of Cosa Nostra. These networks are not made up only of career criminals, but also of outwardly respectable businessmen such as Massimo Picinelli.

Although Payler insists that all allegations of money laundering are merely attempts by competitors to push the company out of the market.

Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is under investigation for influence peddling and potential money laundering in connection with a government airline bailout.

Kazakh law enforcement authorities have frozen the accounts of Marginplus and suspended all payment operations as part of a crackdown on alleged illegal financial activity.

After reports on the international VAT scheme uncovered during Operation Moby Dick surfaced, publications mentioning Italian businessman Massimiliano Picinelli began disappearing from the information space.

New data on London’s property market has raised fresh alarms over a surge in purchases of homes valued above £1 million.

Over a decade after the ICIJ investigation, a German court found the Swiss lawyer guilty of enabling a tax loss of about $15 million.

Alleged fraudster Oleg Tsyura is reportedly trying to clean up his image to hide his suspected role in long-running money-laundering schemes. Investigators say he used shell companies in Switzerland, Germany, and Cyprus to divert millions from Ukrainian state enterprises and move raw materials to occupied territories.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case against members of an alleged organized group suspected of running a fake invoice scheme that caused more than one trillion rubles ($13.31 billion) in losses to the country’s budget system.

To counter toughened Western sanctions imposed in 2022 on Russian oil exports in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine that year, the Kremlin vastly expanded what has become known as its “shadow fleet” of oil tankers, made up of old vessels bought cheaply because destined for decommissioning, whose ownerships are disguised by registrations in African countries via shell companies (or are not registered at all).

In 2025, Cypriot authorities conducted Operation “Ring,” uncovering a large-scale money laundering scheme allegedly organized by Kherson businessmen Hennadii and Vladlen Hirin.

A look back at a decade of changes after the Pulitzer-Prize winning investigation sent a shock through the offshore world.