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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

COGNATI INVESTMENTS A.V.V.

Company Name COGNATI INVESTMENTS A.V.V.
Date of Registration 10th January 1997
Company Objective 1.    Acquiring, possessing, managing, selling, exchanging, transferring, alienating, issuing and trading in shares and other certificates of participation, bonds, funds, promissory notes, acknowledgments of debts, bills and other certificates of indebtedness and of other securities, including but not limited to shortselling of securities, buying securities on margin, pledging of securities, engaging in arbitration transactions, contracting, buying and selling of options, puts and calls, participating in the issue of securities not quoted on any stock exchange, letter stocks and negotiable securities in real estate companies, either for its own account or for the account of third parties.

2.    Investing its assets directly or indirectly in immovable goods, rights, acquiring, processing, managing, renting, letting, leasing leasing out, parcelling out, reclaiming, developing, building upon/cultivating, alienating, burdening and operating immovable properties, including immovable properties destined for agricultural and stockbreeding industry, and constructing roads, dikes, rail tracks and similar works on immovable properties, all of which situated outside Aruba.

3.    Conducting international trade outside Aruba and exporting and importing goods from and to countries outside Aruba.

4.    Acquiring:

    a.|proceeds resulting from the alienation or the waiving of the right of using copyrights, patents, patterns, secret processes of formulae, trademarks and similar matters.

    b.|royalties, including rentals with regard to films or in respect of the use of industrial, commercial or scientific installations, as well as with regard to the operation of a mine or quarry or any other immovable goods;

    c.|compensations for rendering technical aid.

5.    Acquiring, mining, producing, processing and manufacturing and trading in (including import and export of) raw materials, minerals and metals, semimanufactured and finished products of any nature and under any name whatsoever.

6.    Representing and protecting the interests of third parties.

7.    Performing as principal, agent, commission agent, controller, manager and/or administrator whatever is related to the foregoing or that may be useful or necessary for that purpose.

8.    The corporation is authorized to do all that may be useful for achieving its purpose or that is related thereto in the widest sense of the word, including participating in any other enterprise or company regardless of its purpose.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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