Loophole for all - Paolo Cirio (2013)

This artwork unveiled over 200,000 Cayman Islands companies to unsettle global financial machinations. In Loophole for All, Cirio hacked the Cayman Islands government registry to leak names of thousands of firms incorporated in the country. Undermining the idea of having a company "on paper" in financial offshore centers, the website Loophole4All.com promoted the low-cost sale of real identities of anonymous Cayman companies in an ironic effort to democratize offshore businesses. This corporate identity theft was enabled by forging Certificates of Incorporation issued with the artist's real name and signature. This performance generated international media attention as well as outcry from Cayman Islands' authorities, international banking and law firms, individual owners of real companies, and PayPal. As part of the conceptual work, Cirio set up his own company in the City of London and took advantage of other jurisdictions to shield personal liability and revenues. Furthermore, the artist interviewed experts and produced a video documentary investigating offshore centers and envisioning solutions to global economic inequality. This intervention foreshadowed financial data breaches such as The Panama and Paradise Papers, which in the following years reshaped global politics. This interventionist and controversial artwork revolved around the concept of Cirio’s legal scheme for the appropriation and exposure of financial secrecy. The provocative action and participatory model were integrated to engage the audience in a performance revealing and protesting the legal tax systems behind economic inequality. In the offline art installation, the paper trail of the operation is displayed with prints of the counterfeited Certificates of Incorporation and the documents of the legal ploy utilized for the project which is illustrated by a single flowchart. https://paolocirio.net/work/loophole-for-all