As a working class individual, you can get excellent financial privacy. You can stick your $10k in savings in cash in a glass jar behind your bed, and neither the government nor big banks nor investigative journalists get to know how much is in thar jar, and they have no say what you spend that money on and when.
A more wealthy individual has no such privacy. Their wealth is not truly wealth and not truly theirs, it is fundamentally a trust-us IOU from a bank or a stockbroker which is shared with all kinds of parties, a publicly visible number on the screen which at any second could turn zero or negative on the orders of a corrupt official or due to a buggy algorithm or mistyped name on a sanctions list.
The more wealthy individual yearns for a glass jar - but no jar is big enough to hold the sums the more wealthy individual operates with.
A more wealthy individual has no such privacy. Their wealth is not truly wealth and not truly theirs, it is fundamentally a trust-us IOU from a bank or a stockbroker which is shared with all kinds of parties, a publicly visible number on the screen which at any second could turn zero or negative on the orders of a corrupt official or due to a buggy algorithm or mistyped name on a sanctions list.
The more wealthy individual yearns for a glass jar - but no jar is big enough to hold the sums the more wealthy individual operates with.
Hence, shell companies.