Offshore A-Z is a digital repository of companies operating across major tax havens. Offshore A-Z exploits the inscrutability of such companies to speculate on their possible nature and intent. Each company listed on here is real, but the information surrounding these consist of both actual records, obtained by dmstfctn, and speculative images and mission statements, generated by algorithms.

Tax havens, or secrecy jurisdictions, employ laws and corporate regulations different from those of most jurisdictions, using secrecy as a prime tool. Furthermore, the agents operating offshore on behalf of clients elsewhere have been observed by dmstfctn to willfully introduce mistakes in the records held on the companies they help forming. (Offshore Investigation Vehicle)

When offshore companies are but a bundle of papers held in private storages, these practices contribute to a number of possible configurations of any given offshore company, whose records are at once factually correct and conveniently flawed.

Offshore A-Z plays with the idea that truth is not one nor static, and that it does not need to be upheld equally at all times or in all fora.

Obtaining the data

The data contained within Offshore A-Z comes from a number of sources. Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency. Employing data scraping techniques, dmstfctn extracted records on hundreds of thousands of companies appearing in a number of such registrars.

Yielding varying amounts of information, and naturally full of gaps - sometimes full company details and descriptions, sometimes little more than a name - the records were cross referenced with data from the ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks as well as Financial Secrecy Index scores from the Tax Justice Network, and compiled into a single searchable database.

Training the algorithms

Algorithms were then trained to fill in the gaps in information. Using keywords from the company’s records as a trigger, the algorithms associate images with each nondescript company and complete missing fields by guessing possible incorporation dates or by generating corporate mission statement via a simple neural network. The coherency and accuracy of the neural network is directly undermined by the opaque source material, or incomplete input records. Finally, companies previously named in the Offshore Leaks ( for example) are hyperlinked to the relevant entry on the ICIJ database, allowing user to investigate further.

Compiling the template

The resulting information is autonomously built into a Web 2.0 page, employing a visual grammar similar to that used by existing registrars of companies. However, under intense scrutiny, the template mealts away revealing warm hues and floating forms.

This cycle of actions is repeated for each unreleased company found in the database and publicly announced by a Twitter bot.

Zooming in

Among the companies listed on the Offshore A-Z, a few appearing to be embedded in complex offshore vehicles were further investigated, resulting in three stories focusing on the funding behind Leave.EU, the corporate tax-avoidance of Barclays and the colonial origins of HSBC.

Offshore A-Z is a project by dmstfctn.

TERMAL A.V.V.

Company Name TERMAL A.V.V.
Date of Registration 2nd July 1990
Company Objective 1a     the invest its funds in securities such as shares and other certificates of participation and bonds, as well as other interest-bearing debts under any name and in any form.;
b     the obtain:
i     opbrengsten arising from the transfer or cede the right to use copyrights, patents, designs, secret process or recipes, trademarks and similar matters;.
ii     royalties, including rent, related to movies or in respect of the use of industrial, commercial or scientific equipment, as well as with regard to the operation of a mine or quarry or any other natural resource and other real estate;

iii     vergoeding for the provision of technical assistance;

c.     the invest directly or indirectly, of its assets in real estate and rights to acquire, possess, rent, lease, lease, lease, subdivide, drainage, develop, enhance, edit, cultivate, sell, or otherwise alienate, mortgage or otherwise encumber real estate and the construction of infrastructure projects such as roads, pipelines and similar works on immovable property;

d.     the provision of bail and other guarantees and transferring ownership whether or not in fiduciary or trust or mortgage, pledge or otherwise encumber assets, and the other as security for the payment of debts the company and the debts of third parties, whether in return contraprestatie;
E     the trade, including wholesale, brokering and futures, as well as the import and export of raw materials, minerals, metals, organic compounds, semi-finished and finished products of any kind and under whatever name.;

f.     the act as finance and mediating in the realization of financing of all types of transactions.

2.     The Company as may not be working in and out of Aruba as a credit institution or credit union as defined in the Ordinance Supervision of banking and kredietwezen.De company may not participate in the Aruban economic transactions with the exception of those acts that are clearly necessary for the holding an office in Aruba.

3.     The Company is authorized to anything that might be useful or necessary to achieve its purpose or therewith in the broadest sense of the term, including participating in any other business or company, and to undertake all other actions on commercial industrial and financial areas.

Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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