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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

GARILLIS CORPORATION

Company Name GARILLIS CORPORATION
Date of Registration 29th August 2015
Company Objective 1. to acquire, own, hold, including register or having registered and keeping registered, manage, lease, rent out, sublease, or otherwise exploit or having exploit, mortgage or otherwise encumber and alienate, including deregister or having deregistered one or more aircrafts as well as rights and interests relating to aircraft;
2. to invest its capital in securities, such as shares and other certificates of participation, bonds, and other interest-bearing debts, by whatever name and in whatever form;
3. to directly or indirectly invest its capital in real estate and rights, to acquire, possess, rent, rent out, lease, lease out, parcel out, reclaim, develop, improve, treat, build over, sell or otherwise alienate, mortgage or otherwise encumber real estate, and to build infrastructural works, such as roads, ducts, and similar works on real estate;
4. to trade, including wholesale, brokering and futures, as well as the import and export of raw materials, minerals, metals, organic compounds, semi-finished and finished products of any kind and under any name whatsoever;
5. to act as a finance company and to mediate in the realization of financing of all kinds of transactions. The company may exclusively perform these activities in such a manner that it cannot be deemed a credit institution as referred to in Article 1, paragraph 1, of the State Ordinance on the Supervision of the Credit System. It shall also be explicitly prohibited, without prejudice to exemption, from performing the acts referred to in Article 48 of the State Ordinance on the Supervision of the Credit System;
6. to participate in and to collaborate with other businesses and legal entities, irrespective of the legal form. The company may exclusively perform these activities in such a manner that it cannot be deemed a Trust Service Provider as referred to in Article 1 of the State Ordinance on the Supervision of Trust Service Providers;
7. to provide security, in whatever form, also for debts of others, whether or not for something in return;
8. to perform all activities and acts that are related to, arise from or may be conducive to the above in the broadest sense.
9. the above shall be done to the extent permitted by and/or subject to the provisions by or pursuant to the relevant laws.
The company may not participate in business transactions in Aruba, with the exception of those legal acts which are necessary for keeping an office in Aruba.
An ultra vires action shall be expressly excluded.
Country
aruba
Financial Secrecy Index [more info] 68
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