> If a company doesn't do any business, then it shall not have a right to exist as it has no reason to exist, as the reason companies exist is to do business.
One typical use of shell companies in mineral exploration is to obfuscate regions of interest from the prying eyes of competitors.
If some wants to gather lease ownership of a large number of small leases in (say) a province of Canada then it's a matter of public record that mining|exploration leases change ownership in public records.
The end goal here is to publicly declare ownership after exploration results (geochimistry, prelim drilling, etc) have been assesed by third party technical reports and put a prospect on the stock market to attract investors. This gets a bit complex when someone else owns a band of rights dead centre through your ROI.
This is a use of shell companies that's distinct from hiding assets from taxation, it's obfuscation for the purpose of getting ducks lined up before going public.
get around such things through the power of cross referencing. Initially with a lot of manual trawling through microfiche records, later with computer assistance and digital records, recently with fully automated approaches.
It's regulation in a great many countries about the globe that mining lease data is recorded and made available to "the public", eg: in the US this is largely handled by the BLM: https://www.doi.gov/ocl/blm-lands-leasing
As to the existantial nature of your question, you might try The Evolution of Resource Property Rights by Anthony Scott, perhaps look back to Roman Doctrine and how their laws carried forward in Western civilisation, look to Chinese history, etc.
The intent of the regulations is to record who is searching for what and where (ie. can be contacted and are responsible for property damage, spills, destruction, etc) to have one prospecter per parcel, etc.
Can you point out a country where it is explicit that the intent is that (say) Rio Tinto has to directly list head office on every lease in the country and cannot spin off a copper division, an iron subgroup, a rare earth exploration subsidiary, etc?
One typical use of shell companies in mineral exploration is to obfuscate regions of interest from the prying eyes of competitors.
If some wants to gather lease ownership of a large number of small leases in (say) a province of Canada then it's a matter of public record that mining|exploration leases change ownership in public records.
The end goal here is to publicly declare ownership after exploration results (geochimistry, prelim drilling, etc) have been assesed by third party technical reports and put a prospect on the stock market to attract investors. This gets a bit complex when someone else owns a band of rights dead centre through your ROI.
This is a use of shell companies that's distinct from hiding assets from taxation, it's obfuscation for the purpose of getting ducks lined up before going public.