Estonia is a terrible corrupt country. I lost a sh..oad of money there and have seen a total breakdown of any administrative function.
Since "e-residency" is used a lot by criminals, Estonian banks likely wont give you a bank account, since they could be cut of from the banking world if they are involved in fraud and money laundering. The government does not care about these crimes, trust me on this one. Why would they? It brings in income.
Estonian corruption problem is overblown, it's a tiny country that does as best it can to profile itself to small companies. In reality the money laundering scandal involving swedish banks is completely on the different level, that's a huge criminal syndicates in east being friends with Scandinavian bankers. You might not be able to bribe that many, in contrast I'd say southern Europe is corrupt for real, some places in Italy, Greece, Spain etc.
Crime is their business model. If you want to do a scam or whatever, do it in Estonia. Trust me, nobody will ever bother you. I could elaborate, but you would not believe me.
Your could probably run a bank there that does nothing but money laundering. Trust me, the financial supervision will be the last one to bother.
“The National Audit Office said the scheme – which has given e-Residency to 63,000 people from 174 countries – has made €10m more in revenue since its launch in 2015 than its total cost of €15.7m. However, the audit also revealed that 95% of the revenue it received came from just 65 e-residents.”
Definitely widened my eyes a little! Thanks for the link
You can look into Malta, they are basically selling EU citizenship (you have to have an address there) and in contrast to “E-citizenship” you could get an EU passport. A bit of warning though, that country is much more corrupt than Estonia. So if you set up your business there many other EU businesses might not be willing to deal with you.