[mojuba]

My understanding is, the purpose of these companies with fictional founders is for founding/owning other companies registered elsewhere. The article does mention that the chain of ownership crosses many borders and can become practically impenetrable or very expensive and time consuming to investigate.

So let's say, somewhere in the chain of onwership there are some real unsuspecting people, possibly accounting agencies, managing real banking accounts. By the time you find them the money will be gone, the agencies will disappear, the occupants of the registered postal addresses will be different. You are going to need a lot of official inquiries in multiple countries to trace everything back to the source. It might prove to be almost impossible to do.

Or by the time you finish your investigation Putin himself will be gone.