Moody’s Analytics has found 21 million “red flags” associated with shell companies that could be used to enable financial crimes, from ancient directors to dubious addresses.
For instance, more than 2,200 companies have directors aged 123 years and above, despite the fact that the oldest known human lived to 122, said Richard Graham, a director at Moody’s Analytics, in research published Monday. One listed director — at 942 years old — would have been born in the 11th century.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Moody’s Analytics has found 21 million “red flags” associated with shell companies that could be used to enable financial crimes, from ancient directors to dubious addresses.
Atypical directorship is just one of seven key behaviors highlighted in the research, including mass registration, dormancy and circular ownership.
While new regulations across the world are looking to improve transparency at shell companies, there is still some way to go, with $1.6 trillion laundered annually, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.
“Organizations today face mounting complexity in understanding true ownership structures and detecting risky corporate relationships,” said Ted Datta, head of the financial crime compliance practice for Europe, Africa and Americas at Moody’s Analytics.
While shell companies might have legitimate purposes, their opaqueness is often use to hide criminal financial activity, Moody’s Analytics said.
Other red governance flags included jurisdictional risk, outlier ultimate beneficial ownership and financial anomalies, it said.
The original article contains 342 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!