That pretty easy. Let's say you're a government official who's in charge of a local subway. One of the stations is in need of renovation. You're opening a tender for that and got 3 participants - 2 of them are some independent companies with bids around market price of the work required. Lets say 105 and 107 thousands euro. And the third company belongs to your brother in law and he wants 500 thousand euros for his services. In perfect world such bid won't stand a chance. But, since you're the one responsible for the tender, you can change requirements for the set of documents required for participation like one day before start, making it impossible for other participants to provide documents in time and thus making them unable to participate. So your brother in law wins the tender, sub-contract work to some third party for the market price and you split the rest of the money. And even if you're will be charged with "improper use of municipal funds" you'll be fined with something around 500 euro and will keep your job.

That is what I've meant by saying "basically own" - you can do whatever you want with company and you can't be held responsible for any of your actions.

And that's not just some imaginary scheme - that shit happens on daily basis in most of Eastern Europe countries. I'm from Ukraine and we're trying to fight that shit for several years now.