You wrote: <<This is why, when you are incorporating an off-shore company, you need some kind of "representative" in the country itself.>> Absolutely not. All kinds of shell corporations are setup with nothing more than a letterbox. Look at the Carribean (incl. Bermuda), Gibraltar, Isle of Man, Langkawi, Singapore, Hongkong (the list goes on and on!). Literally, they have huge numbers of off-shore corporations registered with no one on-shore.

In places with stronger regulation and rule of law, these letterbox shell corporations are not allowed or strictly regulated.