Corporations created in Las Vegas don’t stay in Las Vegas

For those who live here, it’s not news that all roads lead to Las Vegas. These days they point even more precisely to 5858 S. Pecos Road, Suite 100.

That’s where you’ll find the office of M.F. Corporate Services, the local representative and shell corporation-creating functionary of the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca &Co. The law firm and its subsidiary are at the center of a swirling international scandal that has shed a critical light on Nevada’s easy and secretive laws of incorporation, which appear to have enabled Mossack Fonseca to help its clients launder criminal proceeds.

But just how prolific was diminutive M.F. Corporate Services?

A check of the in-depth reporting of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other articles analyzing the massive “Panama Papers” document leak reveals 123 pass-through shell corporations associated with a scandal linking Mossack Fonseca as a facilitator of corruption in Argentina and elsewhere. Other reports note as many as 150 companies.

That sounds like a lot of corporate entities officially stamped with the approval of the Nevada secretary of state’s office. But as audacious as it may seem, that’s only a small fraction of the 1,026 domestic limited liability corporations that list M.F. Corporate Services as their registered agent.

Perhaps we should be thankful that Nevada keeps a public record of LLCs after they’ve been defaulted on, dissolved or permanently revoked. It doesn’t bring us closer to the activities of the law firm’s clients or specifically answer why so many would use Nevada’s secretive pass-through corporate process for their business activities, but it does begin to give you a sense of the scale of the Mossack Fonseca business model. And, of course, it is hardly alone in this activity.

Nevada’s business climate may have struggled in reality in recent years, but on paper thousands of shell LLCs were created here by the subsidiary.

They didn’t remain here. A random selection of the companies created reveals some exotic destinations for the their managers. If you want to meet them, you’d better pack a passport.

Take the Alfa Investment Group Ltd., for example. It was incorporated May 25, 2011, and is listed as active on the secretary of state’s website. Its manager is listed as Krandell Limited, Akara Building, 24 DeCastro Street, Wickhams Cay 1 Road Town, Tortola, the Virgin Islands. It is listed as an officer in an inactive Nevada LLC called Corporacion Las Dos Torres Ltd., which was created in 2009.

And there’s Anderson &Beaumont Ltd., which was created Dec. 14, 2005, lists M.F. Corporate Services as its resident agent and is headquartered in Lugano in the Italian-speaking Ticino region of Switzerland. It is managed by Andrea Malera, according to its listing, and its Nevada business license expires at the end of this year.

Then there’s another M.F. Corporate Services creation, Zhou Xi Investments, which came into being Feb. 22, 2007, and lists a revoked status. It was managed by Plascot Limited with an address on the first floor of the Oliaji Trade Center, Victoria Mahe, in the Seychelles island nation located in the Indian Ocean off East Africa.

There is no evidence linking these three LLCs, or many of the others on the 21 pages of listings associated with M.F. Corporate Services, to criminal activity of any kind. But for the fact they were among the more than 1,000 LLCs created by the scandalized Mossack Fonseca subsidiary, they’d probably never be noticed at all.

But these days you may find yourself wondering how companies created in Nevada by M.F. Corporate Services would wind up so far from home.

It’s a question authorities are also asking as the Panama Papers scandal unwinds.

John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Contact him at 702-383-0295 or jsmith@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith