The Netherlands ranks fourth in the EU and ninth in the world as a country with the most suspicious mailbox registrations.

This can be seen from the report ‘Risky business? Seven shell company risk indicators’ from Moody’s. Moody’s found no less than 403 companies at one address in Muiden. This is nothing compared to shopping centers in South Africa, where 61 thousand companies are registered at one address. Amazingly, the Pyramids of Giza also perform well when it comes to mailbox companies: no less than 22,686 companies are registered at the address of this wonder of the world.

Old driver

There are also many incidents related to the driver’s age that indicate criminal activity. More than two thousand drivers are over 123 years old and 4,500 drivers are less than five years old. A 943 year old director was even discovered in Belgium. In the Netherlands, this is less extreme, but here also a five-year-old driver and a 109-year-old driver were found.

In the Netherlands, Moody’s found a total of 377,399 red flags indicating suspicious practices. That equates to 54 red flags per thousand companies. In comparison, Russia performs better with 22 flags per thousand establishments and the United States has 23 flags per thousand establishments. Even China did slightly better, with 52 red flags per thousand companies. 21 million red flags identified worldwide.

The UK ranks first in the total number of red flags with five million red flags, followed by China with 3.4 million red flags. America came in third, with 1.8 million red flags.

Panama Papers

One of the most influential events in the field of shell companies was the publication of the Panama Papers in 2016. The leak of no less than 11.5 million documents from the legal consulting firm Mossack Fonseca caused a massive revolution in the field of tax evasion, according to Moody’s.

Between 2016 and 2020, the number of suspicious companies with red flags halved from 1.23 million to 608 thousand, partly due to new laws in response to the scandal. The Panama Papers led, among other things, to raids by FIOD in the Netherlands.