> Okay, so you assign your payment to $MALTA-COMPANY the line-item of 'consulting fees'. It only takes a few companies to do this before the tax authorities are

> Okay, so you assign your payment to $MALTA-COMPANY the line-item of 'consulting fees'. It only takes a few companies to do this before the tax authorities are wise to it. Tax authorities already don't give a fuck about where a company shifts its money to. As long as there's a proper entry in the books, at least. There are schemes involving up to six different legal entities [1]. A measly million dollars or two is a minor rounding error for a multibillion dollar company. > Think about it this way: if it was that easy to hide expenses from authorities, embezzlement schemes would be a lot simpler than they are now. Embezzlement is easier the higher the embezzler is in the command chain. When the CFO orders something to happen - say, a monetary transfer or the creation of a shell company - it will usually be executed without question by the lower levels. Maybe, given the rise of impersonation attacks, the underlings will follow protocol and call the CFO back to verify that it is really the CFO ordering that thing, but that's it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement