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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

AOA AIRCRAFT OPERATION & ASSISTANCE

Company Name AOA AIRCRAFT OPERATION & ASSISTANCE
Date of Registration 11th November 2012
Company Objective 1.a. investing 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) income arising from the transfer or cede the right to use copyrights, patents, designs, secret processes or recipes, trademarks and similar matters;
(ii) royalties, including rents, 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) compensation for the provision of technical assistance;
c. the direct or indirect investment of its funds in property and rights to acquire, possess, rent, lease, lease, lease, subdivide, drainage, develop, enhance, edit, cultivate, sell, or otherwise dispose of, mortgaging or otherwise objections property and rights and the construction of infrastructure projects such as roads, pipelines and similar works on immovable property and rights;
d. 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, all this as security for the payment of the debts of the company and the debts of third parties, whether in return contraprestatie;
e. trade, including wholesale, brokering and futures, as well as the import and export of raw materials, minerals, metals, organic materials, intermediates and final products of any kind and under any name whatsoever;
f. acquire, possess, keep, which may also include its registration or do register and holding register, manage, rent, lease, sublet, lease or otherwise exploit or do operate, mortgaging or otherwise encumber and alienate such may also include are deregistering or do deregistering one or more aircraft as well as rights and interests relating to aircraft;
g. acting as finance and mediating in the realization of financing of all types of transactions.
2. The company may not act as a credit institution as referred to in Article 1 paragraph 1 of the Ordinance Supervision Credit System.
3. The company regarding its business meets the criteria of a credit institution as defined in the Ordinance Supervision Credit System is not yet considered as such if the company:..
a a group financing has been provided for in the national decree AB 2000 29 ie only another exception laid down by national decree implementing the provisions of or pursuant to Article 1 paragraph 2 of the Banking Ordinance supervision;
b. By order of the Central Bank of Aruba referred to in Article 1 paragraph 3 Ordinance Supervision Credit System does not qualify as such.
The is expressly prohibited the company, unless exempted by the Central Bank of Aruba, to apply directly or indirectly to the public in respect of the commercial raising funds or in respect of the commercial grant credits, or in any form in this mediation, subject to the provisions of the credit System in Article 48 of the Ordinance supervision.
4. The Company is authorized to anything that might be useful or necessary to achieve its purpose or therewith in the broadest sense of the term, including participating in any other business or company, and to undertake all other actions in the commercial, industrial, aviation and finance.
5. The above will be made to the extent permitted by and subject to the provisions under or pursuant to the relevant laws.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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