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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

BINAM INTERNATIONAL

Company Name BINAM INTERNATIONAL
Date of Registration 14th January 2008
Company Objective A. The investment of its assets in securities such as shares and other certificates of participation and bonds, as well as other interest-bearing debts under any name and in any form;
b. obtaining:
i proceeds arising from the disposal of the surrender of the right to use copyrights, patents, designs, secret process or recipes, trademarks and similar matters;
ii royalties, including huren.met related to movies or in respect of the use of industrial, commercial or scientific equipment, as well as with regard to the operation of a mine or quarry or any other natural resource and other immovable property;
iii fee for the provision of technical assistance;
c. trade, including wholesale, brokering and futures, as well as the import and export of raw materials, minerals, metals, organic compounds, semi-finished and finished products of any kind and under any name whatsoever;
d. directly or indirectly invest its assets in property and rights to acquire, own, manage, rent, lease, lease, lease, subdivide, drainage, develop, enhance, edit, cultivate, sell, (do) exploit or otherwise dispose , mortgaging or otherwise encumber property and the construction of infrastructure projects such as roads, pipelines and similar works on immovable property;
e. acting as finance and mediating in the realization of financing of all types of transactions;
f. The company sub e mentioned activities can only carry out in such a way that they do not as a credit institution as defined in Article 1 paragraph 1 of the Ordinance Supervision Credit System can be considered. It is also expressly prohibited without exemption, to perform Banking transactions referred to in Article 48 of the Ordinance Supervision;
g. the setting of bail and other guarantees and the transfer of ownership or mortgage, pledge or otherwise encumber assets, and the other as security for the payment of the debts of the company and the debts of third parties, whether in return contraprestatie;
h. acquire, possess, keep, including without limitation may be (doing) recording and / or (do) teboekstellen and keep the registered and / or teboekgesteld, manage, rent, lease, sublease, or otherwise exploit or do operate, mortgaging or otherwise encumber and alienate, including without limitation may be (doing) deregister or (do) delete the written record of one or more aircraft or ships, as well as rights and interests in aircraft or ships relate.
i. participating import, support buying an interest in any way in other companies, partnerships and legal persons, regardless of the object clause;
j. the performance of all work and all actions, which are related in the broadest sense of the foregoing, ensuing from or may be conducive thereto.
The company may not participate in the Aruban economy-driven, with the exception of legal acts necessary for holding an office in Aruba.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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