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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

TERRAFORCE CORPORATION

Company Name TERRAFORCE CORPORATION
Date of Registration 28th August 2012
Company Objective 1.a. the investment of its resources in securities, such as shares and other certificates of title to shares, and bonds, as well as in other interest-bearing claims by whatever name and in whatever form;
b.    the acquisition of:
(i)    proceeds resulting from the alienation or relinquishment of the right to make use of copyrights, patents, models, secret processes or formulas, trademarks and the like;     
(ii)    royalties, including rentals with regard to movies or in respect of the use of industrial, commercial, or scientific installations, as well as regarding the exploitation of a mine or quarry or any other natural resource and other real property;
(iii)    compensations for providing technical assistance;
c.    the direct or indirect investment of its resources in real estate and rights, the acquisition, possession, hiring, letting, leasing, leasing out, parceling out, reclamation, development, improvement, treating, building over, selling or alienating otherwise, mortgaging or encumbering otherwise real estate, and the construction of infrastructure works such as roads, pipes and main and similar works on real estate;
d.    standing surety and giving other guarantees and the transfer into ownership - whether or not into fiduciary ownership or into trust - or mortgaging, pledging or otherwise encumbering of assets, all this as security for the payment of the Corporation's debts and the debts of third parties, whether or not against a consideration;     
e.    the trade in, including the wholesale and the distributive trade and the business in futures, as well as the import and export of raw materials, minerals, metals, organic substances, semi-finished and finished articles of whatever nature and by whatever name;
f.    to act as a finance company and to mediate in the arrangement of the financing of all kinds of transactions.
    g.    to acquire, possess, hold, which may also include to register or to arrange for third parties to register and to keep registered, to manage, hire, let, sublet, lease, or otherwise operate or arrange for third parties to operate, to mortgage or otherwise encumber and to alienate, which may also include to deregister or arrange for third parties to deregister one or more aircrafts, as well as rights and interests relating to aircrafts;
2.    The Corporation may not be active as a credit institution as meant in Article 1, paragraph 1, of the State Ordinance Supervision Credit System.
3.    The Corporation of which the enterprise meets the criteria of a credit institution as meant in the State Ordinance Supervision Credit System shall yet not be considered as such, if the corporation:
a.    is a group finance company as meant in the State Decree, Statute Publication Gazette (SPG) 2000, no 29, or any other exception laid down by State Decree for the implementation of the provision by, or pursuant to Article 1, paragraph 2, of the State Ordinance Supervision Credit System;
b.    is not considered as such by decision of the Central Bank of Aruba as meant in Article 1, paragraph 3, State Ordinance Supervision Credit System.
Except for exemption by the Central Bank of Aruba, the Corporation is expressly prohibited from applying to the public directly or indirectly with the object of attracting moneys in the ordinary course of its business, or with the object of granting credits in the ordinary course of its business, or to act as an intermediary in any form in this matter, and this with due observance of the provision in Article 48 of the State Ordinance Supervision Credit System.
4.    The Corporation is authorized to do all that may be useful or necessary to achieve its object, or that is related to it in the broadest sense of the word, including the participation in any other enterprise or corporation, as well as the performance of all other acts in the commercial, industrial and financial field.
5.    The Corporation shall not participate in the Aruban economic intercourse, with the exception of those
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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