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 Prior to the Offshore Leaks, the snippets of information available on offshore companies were largely confined to the outdated online registrars kept by tax havens, as an empty gesture towards transparency.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

PIAVE HOLDING

Company Name PIAVE HOLDING
Date of Registration 29th January 2016
Company Objective 1.a. acting as a holding company, including the investment of its assets in securities such as shares and other securities in respect of bonds and other interest-bearing debt, by whatever name and in whatever form;
b. to participate in, support to or an interest in any way with, or conduct the management of, or perceive the representation of other companies, partnerships and legal persons, regardless of the object clause, provided that this is not a professional way place or otherwise so that the company could be regarded as a trust office as referred to in Article 1 of the State Ordinance on the supervision of trust offices;
c. to acquire, possess, alienate, build and do build, manage and develop and rent, sell, lease, mortgaging and / or generally encumber registered goods and / or any right or interest in real property;
d. 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 contracts of pension insurance with an insurer who is in possession of a authorization referred to in Article 5, first paragraph, of the State Ordinance supervision insurance;
e. building and ensuring pensions for the benefit of, and distributions to shareholders directors of the company or of its affiliates, and their survivors;
f. acting as finance and mediating in the realization of financing of all types of transactions;
g. the Company may in section 1. mentioned activities engaged exclusively 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 may be considered also is expressly prohibited without the exemption, the procedure set out in Article 48 of the Ordinance Supervision Credit System to perform.
2. Within its goal, the company can carry out all what holds for this purpose in the broadest sense, both for its own account and on behalf of third parties.
3. 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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