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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

MERYATTA TRADING AVV

Company Name MERYATTA TRADING AVV
Date of Registration 30th May 1995
Company Objective 1.    to acquire, possess, manage, sell, exchange, transfer, alienate, issue and trade in shares and other certificates of participation, bonds, funds, promissory notes, debentures, bills of exchange and other evidences of indebtedness and other securities, including but not limited to the short sale of securities, the purchase of securities on margin, pledging of securities, engaging in arbitrage transactions, entering into, purchase and sale of options, puts and calls, participating in private placements, dealing in unregistered securities, letterstocks and marketable securities in real estate companies, either for its own account or as intermediary for its own account or for the account for third parties;

2.    to acquire, possess, manage, alienate, develop, invest in general in immovable goods located outside of Aruba;

3.    to conduct international trade in general outside Aruba, including wholesale, intermediate and futures trade as well as the import and export of goods to and from countries outside Aruba;

4.    to borrow and lend out monies and in whatever way to give security in behalf of third parties;

5.    to acquire:

1.    proceeds, derived from the alienation or the waiving of the rights to make use of copyrights, patents, models, secret processes or formulae, trademarks, and analogous matters;

2.    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 immovable goods;

3.    compensations for the rendering of technical assistance;

6.    The corporation is not authorized to participate in economic activities in Aruba, with the exclusion of those legal actions necessary for the operation of an office in Aruba, whilst it is also not to be active as a credit-institution or credit union, as referred to in the National Ordinance on the supervision of the banking and credit system.

7.    The corporation is empowered to everything that may be useful for the attainment of its purpose or that is related thereto in the widest sense of the word, including to participate in any other enterprise or company irrespective of its objective or its location.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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