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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

V.C.D. DEVELOPMENTS

Company Name V.C.D. DEVELOPMENTS
Date of Registration 30th August 2013
Company Objective 1. acting as developer and connected to it directly or indirectly invest its funds in property and rights to acquire, own, rent, lease, lease, lease, subdivide, drain, drain, develop, bring in better condition, editing, cropping, build and do build, manage and adminstreren, sell or otherwise alienate, mortgage or otherwise encumber or immovable property, PROVIDED THAT THE INTENDED ACTIVITIES ARE NOT INTENDED FOR cONSTRUCTION oF HOTELS aND / oR CONDOMINIUMS CQ CONVERTING AN EXISTING BUILDING IN THAT PURPOSE.
2. bemiddeln the transactions in immovable property, as well as giving advice in relation to transactions in real property;
3. designing, creating specifications, accepting, arranging and carrying out of construction work, including reconstruction and restoration;
4. trade in construction materials and machinery required to develop their own projects and grounds;
5. renting and leasing of heavy equipment machines and tools required in the construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of buildings;
6. acting as finance and mediating in the realization of financing with regard to the above, e.e.a. in such a way that they do not credit system can be considered as a credit institution as defined in Article 1, paragraph 1 of the Ordinance Supervision;
7. The provision of bail and other guarantees and ownership transfer 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 third party debt whether or not contraprestatie.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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