No, that statement is a subjective assessment.

Any company, including shell companies, will have business activity on paper. In other words, there are invoices, financing or a combination.

This is why it’s difficult to define shell companies. A more realistic proxy is to look at the ratio of employed people by the particular entity to revenue or some other financial metric.

Most shell companies don’t have many employees while the financial figures might be huge. Again, this might be a bona fide structure as part of an international holding but at least you have an objective filter as a starting point.