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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

I.A. NICOLAAS ADVOCATEN

Company Name I.A. NICOLAAS ADVOCATEN
Date of Registration 30th November 2010
Company Objective 1. The exercise of legal practice in the broadest sense, by authorized persons under their personal professional and moreover taking into account all the legal provisions applicable, in particular the provisions of the legislation in terms of the legal profession;
2. participating in legal partnerships or partnerships of professionals with lawyers to participate in law corporations, companies from other professionals with attorneys or other companies in general, the foregoing subject to compliance with all applicable provisions on the legal profession, especially the provisions of the legislation in terms of the legal profession;
3. the provision of services, as well as giving advice on legal, fiscal, economic, financial, secretarial and technical fields and in the field of personnel and organization of individuals and organizations such as companies, governments, public bodies, private entities, partnerships and associations .
4. the setting of bail and other guarantees, jointly and severally connect and transfer the ownership - whether in fiduciary or trust - or mortgage, pledge or otherwise encumber assets, foregoing security for the satisfaction
of the debts of company and the third-party liabilities, whether or not for contraprestatie;
5. investing its assets in securities such as shares and other securities in respect of bonds and other interest-bearing schuidvorderingen, by whatever name and in whatever form;
6. directly or indirectly invest 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 business and the construction of infrastructure projects such as roads, pipelines and similar works in real estate.
7. the benefit of management, staff, 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 with a vezekeraar who is in possession of a authorization referred to in Article 5, first paragraph, of the State Ordinance supervision insurance;
8. building and ensuring pension in favor of - and making distributions to shareholders, directors of the company or of its affiliates, and their survivors;
9. acting as finance and mediating in the realization of financing of all types of transactions;
10. the company's activities referred to in paragraph 9 may 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 listed in aftikel 48 of the Ordinance Supervision;
11. participating input, providing support on or is in any way interested in continuing, or carry it over or directors perceive the representation of other companies, partnerships and legal persons, regardless of the object clause;
12. 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.
A appeal is ruled on target excess.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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