OK, if we assume that it only works if you can hide a small amount of illicit activity in a flurry of legit activity, it can't be such a large problem; maybe you can make 5% of your transactions illicit, but not even 50%. I don't think this is the case with Russian oligarchs right now.
I always had thought that the idea of shell companies is that there is a long chain, or even DAG, of companies that own basically nothing but obligations of other such companies, and the structure is large enough that tracing it back to the original masters and beneficiaries becomes infeasible.
If running a typical no-op LLC is $200-300 a year, running 30 of them is $6-9k, not an entirely trivial amount but quite feasible for anyone interested to hide even mere $200-300k of illicit activities, like selling a moderate-size home.
I always had thought that the idea of shell companies is that there is a long chain, or even DAG, of companies that own basically nothing but obligations of other such companies, and the structure is large enough that tracing it back to the original masters and beneficiaries becomes infeasible.
If running a typical no-op LLC is $200-300 a year, running 30 of them is $6-9k, not an entirely trivial amount but quite feasible for anyone interested to hide even mere $200-300k of illicit activities, like selling a moderate-size home.