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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

INTERVEST HOLDING N.V.

Company Name INTERVEST HOLDING N.V.
Date of Registration 21st January 1997
Company Objective 1.     the exerting a holding company.
2.     the exercise of a publisher, including without limitation, editing, including editing
printing, distribution of newspapers, magazines, brochures, books,
advertising materials, advertising printed matter, other printed matter and other written
communications media, as well as image and sound carriers, such as compact discs, cassettes and
laser discs.
3.     the invest its funds in securities such as shares and other securities
representing its and bonds as well as in other interest bearing debt
under any name and in any form;
4     the obtain:
(i) income arising from the transfer or cede the right to use
of copyright, patents, gehieme process or recipes,
trademarks and similar matters;.
(ii) royalties, including rents, related to movies or in respect of the use
industrial, commercial or scientific equipment, as well as with regard to the
operation of a mine or quarry or any other natural resource, other
immovable property;
(iii) compensation for velrenen technical assistance;
5.     the directly or indirectly invest its funds in real estate and entitlement,
, possess, rent, lease, lease, lease, subdivide, drainage, develop
, enhance, edit, cultivate, sell, or otherwise dispose of,
mortgaging or otherwise encumber real estate and the construction of
infrastructural works such as roads, pipelines and similar works on buildings
goods;
6     the provision of bail and other guarantees and transferring ownership -. Whether or not
fiduciary or trust - or mortgage, pledge or otherwise encumber
assets, a thing as security for the payment of debt
der vernnootschap and the debts of third parties, whether in return contraprestatie;
7.     the trade, including wholesale, brokering and futures,
as well as the import and export of raw materials, minerals, metals, organics,
semis and eindproducten of any kind and under any name whatsoever;
8. Borrow     the and lending to professional market respectively valid
natural and legal persons to the company are related by
directly or indirectly shares, the issuance of debt securities funds obtained lend
and in any way to provide certainty for third parties,
provided that the company is not acting as a credit institution or
credit union as defined in the Ordinance supervision banking and credit
9     the market.. - including the retail, wholesale, import, export, transit, and agenturen-
commission business - in as well as rent, lease, operation, leasing and chartering of all
eligible goods and objects \. n10.     The company is authorized to anything to achieve its target
may be useful or necessary or therewith in the broadest sense of the term, including the
participate in any other company or partnership.
e. Others far as those activities outside Aruba and exclusively for non - residents will be done

.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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