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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

RED POSTAL ANDINA AVV

Company Name RED POSTAL ANDINA AVV
Date of Registration 13th November 1993
Company Objective a.    to invest its resources in securities, such as shares and other certificates of participation and debentures, as well as in other interest-bearing claims, irrespective of their name and in any shape or form;

b.    to acquire:

    i|proceeds, direved from the alienation or the relinquishment of the right to make use of copyrights, patents, models, secret processes of formulae, trademarks, and analogous matters;

    ii|royalties, including rentals with regard to films or concerning the use of industrial, commercial or scientific installations, as well as with regard to the operation of a mine or quarry or any other natural resource and other real property;

    iii|compensation for the rendering of technical assistance.

c.    to invest its funds, directly or indirectly, in real property and rights, to acquire, own, hire, letout, lease, rent, parcel out, drain, develop, improve, cultivate, build upon, sell or otherwise alienate, mortgage or otherwise encumber of real property and to construct infrastructural works such as roads, conduits and similar works on real property;

d.    to give security and other guarantees and to transfer into ownership whether or not in fiduciary ownership or under trusteeship, or to mortgage, pledge or otherwise ecumber of assets componants, the things mentioned as security for the fulfillment of liabilities of the corporation and the liabilities of third parties, whether or not against counterperformance;

e.    the trade in under which is included wholesale, intermediate and futures trade, as well as the import and export or raw materials, minerals, metals, organic substances, semi-finished products and finished products of whatever nature under whatever name;

f.    to act as financing company and as intermediary in the realization of the financing of all sorts of transactions;

2.    The corporation may not be active in and outside Aruba as a credit-institution or credit union as referred to in the National Ordinance on the supervision of the banking and credit system. The corporation may not participate in economic activities in Aruba, except for those legal transactions which are required to hold an office in Aruba.

3.    The corporation is authorized to perform all which is related with or which can be instrumental to the atainment of its objective or which is related therewith, in the most general sense of the word, including the participation in any other enterprise or corporation and also to perform all other acts of commercial, industrial and financial nature.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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