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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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.

WESTCHESTER TRUST COMPANY A.V.V.

Company Name WESTCHESTER TRUST COMPANY A.V.V.
Date of Registration 12th September 1990
Company Objective A.     the invest its funds in securities such as shares and other certificates of participation and bonds and other interest-bearing debts under any name and in any form;

    the obtain:
i     opbrengsten arising from the disposal of the surrender of 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 affairs;

iii     vergoedingen for the provision of technical assistance;

c.     the directly or indirectly invest its funds in real estate and rights to acquire, possess, rent, lease, lease, lease, subdivide, drainage, develop, enhance, edit, cultivate, sell, or otherwise dispose , mortgaging 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 in fiduciary ownership or trust or verhypotkekeren, pledge or otherwise encumber assets, all this as security for the payment of the debts of company and the third-party liabilities, whether or not for contraprestatie;

e      th trade imports including wholesaling, 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 must not act as a credit institution or credit union, as defined in the Ordinance Supervision of banking and credit system. The company may not participate in the Aruban economic traffic, except dei legal acts necessary for the holding of an office in Aruba.

3.     The Company is authorized to anything to achieve its target useful or may be necessary or therewith in the broadest sense of the term, including participating in any other business or company, and to undertake all other actions or commercial, industrial and financial cooperation.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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