How do opaque corporate structures hide the proceeds of corruption?

Detailed Explanation

By putting distance between a person and an asset. Layers of holding companies across several jurisdictions, nominee directors, and bearer-style arrangements each break the visible link between beneficial owner and account. None of those layers is illegal on its own — legitimate businesses use holding structures for tax, liability and succession reasons. The signal is a structure whose complexity has no commercial explanation proportionate to the business it holds. That is what beneficial ownership registers and source-of-wealth enquiries are trying to cut through: not the existence of the structure, but the absence of a coherent reason for it.