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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

V.C.M. INVESTMENTS AVV

Company Name V.C.M. INVESTMENTS AVV
Date of Registration 3rd July 1995
Company Objective 1.    To acquire, possess, manage, sell, exchange, transfer, alienate, issue and trade in shares and other rights of participation, bonds, funds, promissory notes, debentures, bills of exchange and other evidences of indebtedness and of other securities, including but without limitation the shortsale of securities, the purchase of securities on margin, the hypothecation of securities, the engaging in arbitrage transactions, the writing, purchase and sale of options, puts and calls, the participating in private placements, the dealing in unregistered securities, letter stocks and marketable securities representing real estate holdings, for its own account, as commission agent as well as broker of third parties.

2.    To acquire, posses, manage, alienate, develop and in general invest in real property situated outside Aruba.

3.    To carry out international trade in general outside Aruba, thereby including the wholesale trade, the intermediate trade and the trade in future and future contracts, as well as to export and import goods to and from countries outside Aruba.

4.    To borrow and lend money, and to give guarantees and or securities in any way for the borrowings of third paries, it being understood that the corporation may only perform these activities within the framework of its normal operations, and in such a way that it cannot be deemed a credit institution or credit union as meant in the State Ordinance Supervision Banking and Credit System. Furthermore, it is expressly prohibited from attracting moneys from the public and/or lending out moneys to the public.

5.    to acquire:

i.    revenues, derived from the alienation or leasing of the right to use copyrights, patents, designs, secret processes or formulae, trademarks and other analogous property;

ii.    royalties, including rentals, in respect of motions picture films or for the use of industrial, commercial or scientific equipment, as well as relating to operation of mine or quarry or of any other extraction of natural resources and other immovable properties;

iii.    renumeration for the rrendering of technical assistance;

6.    The corporation is not authorized to transact any business in Aruba, with the exception of those legal acts which are necessary for maintaining an office in Aruba.

7.    The corporation is authorized to do any and all things that may be useful in order to attian attain its objects or that may be connected therewith in the widest sense of the word, including to participate in any other enterprise or company irrespective of its place of establishment.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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