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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

ALEXANDRA BEAUTY SALON & SPA N.V.

Company Name ALEXANDRA BEAUTY SALON & SPA N.V.
Date of Registration 22nd June 2008
Company Objective 1. Driving or doing driving a beauty, massage and hairdressing salon and include all do what is customary in a beauty salon, such as giving beauty treatments, the Wassell, cutting, washing and dyeing hair, designing hairstyles and carry it.
2. the operation of one or more gymnastic and health (health center) in the broadest sense with all the facilities CAN inherent therein.
3. DRIVING a sauna area, massage facilities and other areas likely to facilitate the athletes in the sport.
4. (do) giving practical and / or theoretical teaching, instructing buying, advising and assisting participants in practicing sports in the broadest sense, especially, but not limited to, gymnastics, aerobics, weight lifting and joga exercises.
5. keeping naturopath and physiotherapy practices to treat patients including food requirements, such as diets and slimming products, biochemical, biological and homeopathic products, health food home - and drugstore products like creams, lotions, massage alien, equipment and instrumentation in the practice of physical exercises and other techniques such as, but not limited to, algotherapy, hydrotherapy, mud and seaweed, mecanoterapia and the like.
6. driving the market - including retailers, wholesalers, intermediate, transit, commission and agency trade - importing and exporting afford all instruments, sports goods, clothing and other articles necessary for the exercise of the bottom paragraph 1, 2, 3 and 4 procedures and treatments.
7. the buying and selling, the retail, wholesale and agency trading, as well as imports and exports, and promote the use of cosmetics, hair and skincare and related products, sunglasses, perfumes and eau de toilette, drugstore products in the widest sense.
8. arranging all that can sweeten the athletes in their sports activities, including without limitation, the organization
of games and driving a "health bar" which provides athletes from several beverage and eetspecialiteiten.
9. the provision of bail and other guarantees and transferring ownership whether or not in fiduciary or trust or mortgaging, pledging or otherwise encumber assets, and the other as security for the payment of debts more company and the debts of other legal or natural persons who are directly or indirectly linked to the company, whether or not for contraprestatie.
10. Investing its assets in securities such as shares and other securities in respect of bonds and other interest-bearing receivables, by whatever name and in whatever form.
11. The direct or indirect investment of its assets in property and rights to acquire, possess, rent, lease, lease, lease, subdivide, drainage, develop, enhance, edit, cultivate, sell or otherwise dispose of, mortgage or otherwise encumber immovable affairs and the creation of infrastructureIe works such as roads, pipelines and similar works in real estate.
12. The benefit of directors, officers, employees and / or former employees of the company or of its affiliates and / or closing their survivors to: standing right, annuity contracts and agreements of pension insurance with an insurer who holds a license as referred to in Article 5, first paragraph, of the State Ordinance supervision insurance.
13. Building and ensuring pensions for the benefit of, and distributions to shareholders Directors of the Company or its affiliates, and their survivors.
14. Acting as a finance and mediating in the realization of financing of all types of transactions.
15. The company, the member 14 listed 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. ALSO is expressly prohibited without the exemption, to perform the acts specified in Article 48 of the Ordinance Supervision Credit System.
16. Participating check, may support buying an interest in any particular way, or observe the government carry over or representation of other companies, partnerships and legal persons, regardless of the target definition.
17. Conducting afford all work and afford all transactions which are related in the broadest sense of the foregoing, ensuing from or may be conducive thereto.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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