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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

PUTTYROOT INTERNATIONAL

Company Name PUTTYROOT INTERNATIONAL
Date of Registration 19th September 1993
Company Objective A. The investing of 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;
b. obtaining
(i) voortvoloeiende proceeds 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 rents, 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 immovable property ;
(iii) compensation for the provision of technical assistance;
c. the direct or indirect investment of its assets in real estate and rights to acquire, possess, rent, lease, lease, lease, subdivide, drainage, develop, enhance, edit, cultivate, sell, or otherwise dispose of, mortgaging or otherwise objections real estate and the construction of infrastructure projects such as roads, pipelines and similar works on immovable property;
d. the setting of bail and other guarantees and the transfer of ownership - whether in fiduciary or trust or mortgage, pledge or otherwise encumber assets, and the other as security for the payment of the debts and the debts of vernnootschap of third parties, whether in return contraprestatie;
e. trade import 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 any name whatsoever;
f. borrowing and lending money to, or to professional market parties, natural and legal persons to the company are linked by direct or indirect holding of shares and the issuance of debt securities for received in loan funds and the provision of security for third parties, provided that the company may not be employed as a credit institution or credit union as defined in the Ordinance Supervision of Banking and credit System.
g. trade - including the retail, wholesale, import, export, transit, agenturen- and commission business - in as well as rent, lease, operation, leasing and chartering of all eligible goods and objects
e. .ea far as those activities outside Aruba and uitsluited benefit of non-residents will be carried out;
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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