WITNESS

Posted in 2000

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I am a former IICD volunteer. I worked in Zambia with IICD in 87-88.
Since then, I have tracked the organization’s progress through contact with IICD students, and through research for a book I am co-writing about volunteering overseas. [How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas, Penguin, 2001)

A little more on my background: I am a graduate student studying
international development.   I facilitate workshops on ‘The Peace Corps and alternatives’ to help people gain their first experiences overseas. My articles about volunteering overseas have been printed in Transitions Abroad, Who Cares, and Access magazines.

In 1998, I visited the IICD office and project in Zimbabwe, as well as
going back to the project where I had worked in Zambia.  I interviewed current volunteers in Zimbabwe as well as talking with staff and  community members there. In Zambia, I interviewed current staff as well as  former staff and community members.   Finally, I have surveyed former  volunteers with IICD.

My personal experience with IICD in 87-88 was very negative (except for  the friendships I developed). My group studied Swahili and East African  history for two months, in preparation to go to Tanzania. Then, after a  month of waiting in Kenya, our visas to Tanzania were denied. We were sent to Zambia without knowing anything about the local history, culture, or languages.

Our first day in the field, we were approached by a group of Zambian farmers who told us that the project had stolen their land. As soon as that crisis was dealt with, other problems developed. We discovered that the Zambian workers on the project were applying pesticides on the project’s garden, without training or protective gear.

The project we worked on, a tree planting project, had been designed by a European gardener with little understanding of Zambian climate, culture, or agriculture. He actually told me that “we need to make them think like us.” After three months, the IICD volunteers were kicked out of the country, because we were working on tourist visas.

When I revisited the project in 1998, I found that all of the hundreds
of trees we had planted were gone – destroyed by insects, rain, and just  plain neglect, since all but six of the 140 Zambian workers had been fired. Some of the former workers told me that the layoffs occurred with very little warning, leading to a great deal of resentment against the organization as people struggled to feed their families.

In my research on IICD, I have found a pattern of financial
exploitation of volunteers and misrepresentation of the volunteer program. I was lied to by the staff in Zimbabwe in an attempt to prevent me from talking with the volunteers. I was able to talk with the volunteers despite the deception, and discovered that the project was characterized by cultural insensitivity and environmental destruction, consistent with my experience in Zambia.

A very high percentage of volunteers drop out of the IICD program when they realize that the promised opportunities to participate in sustainable development never materialize, and/or when they discover information about the “Teachers Group” and Tvind. These
would-be volunteers often forfeit thousands of dollars.

As you probably know, IICD has a massive public relations machine in operation here in the United States. Every college campus I visit seems to have IICD fliers, including my own (American University). Their used clothes boxes appear up and down the East Coast. (Most recently, I noticed that they have just placed one outside the 7-11 in my neighborhood.) People who donate clothes think that they are helping poor people overseas — not realizing that is that they are propping up an organization that may be a cult, and certainly is not promoting sustainable development.

I would be very happy to answer any questions you have about my
experiences as an IICD volunteer and/or my overseas research. There are many legitimate organizations through which people can volunteer overseas, and it saddens me that IICD is able to continue to recruit idealistic people who have no idea about the problems with the organization.

Zahara J. Heckscher

To contact Zahara please phone 202-489-8908

Or email through the website www.volunteeroverseas.org

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Do you have a story? Tell us.

Posted in 2000, revised 2009

Roy Lawaetz of St lucia contacted Humana Alert in 2002 with this account:

In 1986 I tried almost single handedly to save the Caribbean island of St. Lucia from the Tvind Empire. I felt I was qualified to evaluate the pro’s and con’s surrounding Tvind due to my knowledge of the Danish language ( I am from a Danish West Indian family with strong roots in Denmark) and the substantial negative information about the organization that already existed —even at that time, 15 years ago! But the then Prime Minister John Compton of St. Lucia felt otherwise. The politician went on record as proclaiming Tvind would be beneficial for the island and in time to come Tvind would do that island proud. I tried my best to warn St. Lucians. Because I felt these islanders were being given something they knew nothing about without proper counsel that they might someday regret. The Prime Minister, however, took retaliatory steps in the matter in spite of strong protests amongst his own island inhabitants.

” Sell to the Danes or we will move against your property within a week is what he told my then 75 year old father.”

As a result, my father Erik Lawaetz, was pressured by the TVIND EMPIRE and the St. Lucian Government of John Compton to sell 1,137 Acres of agricultural lands for Tvind’s St.Lucia agricultural project. Failure to do so implied expropriation of his property by the St. Lucian Government as stated by the Prime Minister. In a forced land sale my family lost all of that 1,137 acre property to Tvind. “ Obviously pressure tactics like this was too much for my 75 year old father to handle on his own.”

John Compton insisted Tvind pay for the 1,137 acre property however. “ We will use your(Tvind) money” he stated on television in N.Y.C before a group of St. Lucians  to justify his decision. “ To acquire the property. But you must pay the man. And the property will remain in hands of the government of St. Lucia. We will take your money to pay for the property and then lease the property back to you. But the land will belong to St. Lucia”

But just across the water, the neighboring   Caribbean island of St. Vincent ‘s Prime Minister James Mitchell had already expelled the Tvind  Empire accusing them of being “subversives.” I met with Mitchell on one occasion. He told me he had spoke to John Compton about the Danes (Tvind) and  told  him they were no good but that he (Compton)  wanted them into St. Lucia anyway.”

It was hard to believe this was all happening. One Prime Minister disagreeing with one another. The one kicking them out on St. Vincent and the other one forcing us for our large property on St. Lucia just so Tvind could be there. Tvind had now appeared in its negotiable role to St. Lucia as it has done  in so many other places around the globe. But the same situation exists in Denmark where one town will keep them and another town will say  “keep out”. Tvind has learned to live with this and thrives well on opposition and adversity. In such situations Tvind is like a tree being pruned whereby its branches are reduced in size. Growth always manages to regenerate somehow on the global landscape.

The Tvind experience was a nightmare for my family and it was quite natural that I should try and resist the forced sale. Who wouldn’t have in my position? I had to speak out no matter what the consequences. In life we are all faced with challenges. This was one of them for me

Today, a part of Tvind’s enormous wealth in the Caribbean was acquired in the way that I have just described to this TvindAlert website. In St. Vincent, James  Mitchell always has claimed they circumvented the law there in order to acquire the Orange Hill property, an even larger property than that once owned by my father in St. Lucia. I see they are back too in St. Vincent too, even after he (Mitchell)kicked them out. See? The tree has regenerated there too. How this can happen might seem  puzzling at first. But if you take the time out to learn about Tvind you will find it’s all in the global strategy. It should also give you an idea of this group’s diehard determination to change the world. Is there anybody else out there working as hard?

Prime Minister John Compton’s  controversial decision back in 1986 involving the unprecedented property transaction that happened on St. Lucia  was covered by the International press at the time back in 1986,  including Jyllands Posten and Politikken of Denmark. CANA news and Radio Antilles, the Star newspaper and Crusader newspapers and HTS Television of St.Lucia also covered the incident.

My family did not have the financial resources to challenge  the alliance of the Tvind Empire and the then Prime Minister of St. Lucia in a prolonged legal battle. The task was insurmountable which they obviously knew. Besides my family received no assistance or support from the State of Denmark or from the U.S. Government for that matter in its plight. Everyone just appeared indifferent, including some hometown politicians close to the Republican Party at the time. It was only journalists who understood. They knew about Tvind.

Being an ex-military journalist myself in the U.S. Navy I put my old training to good use.

I soon produced my own documentary film entitled “The Captive Investor.” which documented on record at least for future generations how  my 75  year old father as a defenseless investor had to go up against the Tvind Empire and their ally the Prime Minister. The documentary also covers how my father, Erik Lawaetz, in his prime  had already been honored by the Dutch/French St Maarten/St Martin island as “The Father of Tourism” for his “Island Gem” development on that  island by the official governments and was a noted Caribbean developer, featured in U.S.magazines like Look in the mid-fifties for his visionary ideas on Caribbean tourism. His credentials as an achiever were well in place and I felt he was entitled to better treatment not only by the St. Lucian government but also the U.S. Government which specified that U.S. citizens in countries receiving Caribbean  Basin Benefits were entitled to fair investor treatment. What was happening in this scenario paled against any such standards the U.S. government had claimed CBI Beneficiary countries had to adher to. This was not just a forced sale. It was more than that. It was a forced sale to an organization that had its own political ideology as its agenda.

As a U.S. citizen, I formally appealed to the U.S. State Dept. officials   in Washington because St. Lucia was a CBI Beneficiary but still I  received zero help. In New York City I contacted  CBS’s 60 Minutes but they were not interested in covering such a story believing Tvind was “ just a Danish school organization with the world’s largest windmill.”

I can certainly relate to other people whom I have read about who have not been taken seriously when they tell about their own negative Tvind experiences. I have read in a recent story by Rebecca Wakefield of the Miami New Times that land was taken away from certain Zambians by the government in Zambia to give to Tvind. This comes close to my own story, at least on the surface, although I know no details. There may be other “land stories” like this too. In spite of what happened to me and my family with their property I think the worst aspect of the Tvind discussion is the unfortunate parents who have lost their children to the cult. For me this is the real heart wrenching  issue beyond anything else negative one might want to document about Tvind, including the current extradition case against their cult leader Amdi Pedersen who is now in jail in Los Angeles. Amdi Pedersen been in hiding for 22 years but now he ends up close to Hollywood —Amdi like star material

He’s important enough and is highly rated by some as an ideological visionary like a Mao or Fidel Castro. In any quiet revolution the ends usually justify the means so I guess they (Tvind) had no qualms about our property being taken over for their ideological program.

Today, 15 years later, it is monumental déjà vu for me to see the  TVIND organization  being widely documented   by the BBC and countless other credible  media organizations and websites around the world. I guess the world in an even greater context is finally learning more about the  Tvind enigma. But by now Tvind is an unstoppable fast-paced global movement with its ideology firmly rooted across continents including St. Lucia and the U.S. It is amazing for me to see how they have grown since 1986. And their companies operate under various names not always easy to determine. I don’t know if anything can be done except that people tell their own experiences and be vocal and I hope the State of Denmark will wake up and be firm and do what it should have done years ago. Address the problem it has at home. It is a real problem because there are people across the globe that believes in them as I have described in my own story. These people are very vulnerable especially in undeveloped countries. They (TVIND) are extremely clever and they have a deep sense of Organizational purpose and yes…. destiny. And with the money they have received from the Danish State it is easy to convince non-suspecting parties in foreign Governments abroad that they are all about humanitarian causes. They are that too, of course, but I had to look at the whole picture for myself. My personal experience shows they will use ruthless and unorthodox means to acquire someone’s property if they really feel they must have it to experiment with their ideology and money-making ventures. This alone is not humanitarian. Is it? Let anyone from the Tvind Organization deny it happened in St. Lucia. It’s all on record. As they say:  You can fool some of the people all of the time but not all of the people all of the time.

About Roy Lawaetz

Roy Lawaetz is a decorated   United States Veteran who in 1968 served aboard the USS Enterprise in the Ton kin Gulf during the Vietnam War as a Military Journalist and he was graduated at The Defense Information School (DINFOS). In 1969 he shared The Chief Of Naval Operations Award (CHINFO) for Journalistic Excellence together with two other military editors. His final year in the military he spent at the Keflavik NATO Base,

In Iceland where he worked as a broadcast journalist.  He received an Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Navy in 1970.

Today Roy Lawaetz is an abstract artist, the inventor/theorist, of a new art theory, “The Modular Triangular System”. You can reach him at his website:http://www.roylawaetz.com and like many thousands of other people, ex-students, ex-teachers, volunteers, parents, ex-believers of Tvind he wishes he had never met Tvind along  their  “ Road to Victory as they implement their zealous ideology to change our world across continents.”

March 2002

WITNESS

Ake Pecha school, Virginia, USA, 1984-5

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The story of Ake Pecha

by Marianna Maver, USA

Wow!!! Surfing the web this afternoon, I decided to see what I might come up with if I entered “International School Ake Pecha’ into Google.com. And lo and behold, here I landed, like Alice through the looking glass, once again, deja-vu. Astonishing… this group is still up to its old tricks? Still functioning in the US???      Still growing????? Cripes!!! This is really infuriating…

I am a former American employee of the International School Ake Pecha (circa 1984-85). I, along with another American teaching colleague hired at the same time — both of us, I can say, were “liberal, but world-worn, fairly worldly-wise”. Neither of us were the young starry-eyed revolutionary idealists our employers were used to dealing with.

My American colleague and I always wondered about the “holes” in the picture we were able to put together about … Where all the money the Commonwealth of Virginia paid to house, feed, clothe and educate their students (“Our” children, American children, wards of the courts of Virginia), was going… Why the obsession with collecting donations: of books, of clothes, of food (some of which went to our students, some… who knows)… Why the shabby little cinder-block nursing home that served as school and dorm to our 26 students was never invested with adequate repair monies, leaving our kids to live in third-world conditions…Why so little actual care for our students, who were pretty much left to run wild by their burnt-out dorm captains (who were on call 24/7/30/365 — sound familiar…?), most of whom were, frankly, too inexperienced, unskilled and immature to have been placed in the role of sole parent of up to 9 at least haywire, if not profoundly disturbed, pre-teens, teens and (violent)young adults.

We recognized the political bent, and had some sympathy for the idealism and the dedication of our Scandinavian peers, but there was something just really fishy about the whole thing from the top down. It was the money…It was the secretiveness (the main office was deemed out of bounds for my American colleague and I from the first week of our employment — which made us just itch to get in there). It was the hostility toward us, when it became clear we were not interested in moving on campus or handing over our (grudgingly paid and always late) paychecks to the school. It was the wierdness and nervousness of the American “executive director,” who eventually just disappeared without an explanation or a trace. It was the vehemence with which my students were “shooed” away from the Ake Pecha bus, freshly arrived from Massachusetts with a load of newly returned Danes (and what else, we always wondered?… on their way to Central America), to whom my students were simply extending a kindly welcome.

One of the things that rankles me to this day is that our kids could have benefitted greatly from the (generous) funds alloted monthly to the school for the care of each child — these kids had already lost so much in their lives, and time was wasting for each one of them. It became very clear, very quickly to my American colleague and I that those dollars received by the school were not going provide services for our kids, but to feed somebody’s pockets somewhere else in the world. We thought at the time — I think we got the impression from our Scandinavian peers, who probably thought it themselves — that they were scornfully sending “rich American dollars” to their schools in Zimbabwe, St. Johns, in the UK, Holland, (Thailand, I think?)… where it was needed so much more than it was needed by our students, who could do without, because, being American, they were, of course, so much “better off”.

My American teaching colleague and I, within about three months being hired — enough time to get the picture that the picture was not good — with much deliberation, and with growing outrage, decided to go through channels to at least initiate an investigation of the school. The scarey thing about that process was that we didn’t know who to contact who would listen to us… from what we could tell, the placement agencies had been ignoring all the problems, some of them MAJOR safety issues for the students that clearly indicated the school should have been closed (never mind the financial and political stuff). The clever Tvind people had made inroads — and, for all we knew, had the full support of — at least the Department of Mental Health and Retardation, Department of Social Services, Department of Education. (..There might have been another agency, too.. I remember five funding agencies.) The Department of Corrections had already ceased placing students there when it became clear to them that their students were at greater risk there than they might have been anywhere else — I think they only had one student still placed there when the school was closed. My American colleague and I eventually met with the heads of the Departments of Mental Health/ Retardation, and Education. The gentleman from the Department of Education (Les Goode) was very concerned with what he heard, and it is my understanding that it was he who pushed for a thorough investigation.

The hearing was held in Richmond on May 21, 1985. Both my American colleague and I testified, along with social workers who had filed complaints or who had concerns, and some of our Scandinavian peers in their own “defense.” The political and financial concerns were shied away from — too embarrassing, probably, for the funding departments to approach — in favor of the stacks of reports and complaints that had been on file with the separate agencies: security and safety infractions, neglect, students attacking other students, students being left behind a distance from the school when they became out of control. Separately, (tragically) these reports did not appear to amount to much, but combined the stack was impressively tall — this was pointed out in the courtroom — containing enough material to justify rescinding the school’s license. After the hearing, we were thanked by one of the social workers (who had no doubt contributed to the pile of compliants, but had not for some reason been motivated to publicly question the depth of her personal pile). We were thanked for “having the courage to speak out.”

When you go through something like this, you don’t forget. We always wondered what the heck WAS going on at Ake Pecha. Several years after the school was closed my American colleague encountered a British teacher who worked for an American school in Denmark… The question was asked… “Say… have you ever heard of The People’s Folk School… the school in Tvind?” The Brit visibly recoiled: “Why do you want to know?” “Because I had a bad experience working there, and I’m curious about how the school is thought of in Denmark.” The Brit: “Oh, when people in Denmark hear of that school they cringe. They go making money off of everybody, starving their poor idealistic workers,working them to death, and the people on the top are driving around in Merceds and wearing Italian suits.” Click! So it wasn’t a Euro-communist/Maoist/revolutionary cell (whatever)…It was a scam, for the Commonwealth of Virginia, for our kids, even for our idealistic Scandinavian “peers.” We were all “suckered.”

And here on this website today I’m seeing confirmation of everything we’d pretty much put together without confirmation. Thanks! A long-standing mystery in the process of being solved.

I’ll be certain to email this site to the woman who was our contact in the Virginia Attorney General’s office, for her information…

One more thing that remains a mystery to me… in about November of 1984… something happened to the ship the Folk School was operating in the Atlantic — My Scandinavian peers were on the phone to Denmark, walking through the hallway of my section, very upset. Everybody was speaking in Danish, hush-hush about it… I’ve always wondered, and was never able to find out… What happened to The Big Bear? Would somebody who’s “out of the cult” be willing to share that story with me?

Email: mariannamaver@sbcglobal.net

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Do you have a story? Tell us.

Posted: pre-2004

WITNESS

Denmark, Zimbabwe and Angola 1980-95

Laundering $30,000 a week in cash to Denmark

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by Britta Junge

as told to Tvind Alert

I was 19 when I first got involved in 1977. In Denmark in those days, it was normal for students to have a ‘gap year’. Some people went to Christiania and just smoked marijuana – Tvind offered a modern alternative, something with a purpose. I wanted to travel, to go out and see the world. Home was so boring. I just wanted to get away. I was ready for adventure.

With a friend, I went to a big meeting at Tvind in Ulfborg. There were 200 people there. I decided right away ‘this is it’, and signed on to join the September Team. I would spend two months preparing, four months travelling, and three months on follow up back in Denmark.

We left in a convoy of ten old broken-down buses, to travel overland to New Delhi, going through Turkey and Afghanistan – the classic overland trail. I have to admit it was not easy. For the first two months we hardly slept, we were working day and night to repair the buses, fundraising, cooking, cleaning and getting ready to leave. It was an incredible trip.

I didn’t meet Amdi Petersen personally then. He was ‘on the scene’ – this was the time the big windmill was being built at Ulfborg. He was very involved with that.

When I got back I was persuaded to stay and join the ‘continuation programme’ – that meant I would stay and keep involved with Tvind for another 8 months, without making any commitment. Some of my friends from that time were sufficiently ‘boiled up’ when they got back to join the Teachers Group straight away, but I wasn’t so sure.

I went to work in a slaughterhouse in Denmark for five months. The idea was to experience working class life as it really was. I was one of 12 women packing ham for the USA. Then I went back to Tvind for an ‘international period’. I went to Chicago, where they were holding elections for the City Mayor – we canvassed with a local community group on behalf of one of the candidates. It is the only time I remember Tvind getting involved in real politics.

In those days, the money was pretty straight-forward. Tvind was not yet rejected by the Danish government. Our student courses at Tvind were subsidised by the state – of course, Tvind got the money direct. Our pay from the slaughterhouse we sent direct to Tvind. Money wasn’t important, though oddly enough, one thing we did learn was exactly how to plan a proper budget, as if we were being manipulated into agreeing to the Common Economy in the Teachers Group.

I still hadn’t joined the Teachers Group. At the end of 1978 I was invited to go and help with UFF in Odense, Denmark’s third-biggest city. UFF (clothes collecting) had only recently started, and I think the idea was that if I wasn’t going to join the Teachers Group, then at least I could do something useful by helping with UFF.

That was when I was invited to meet Amdi – in 1979. I had been on a skiing trip to Norway with some friends and Amdi wanted to see us when we got back because we had confirmed that we were interested in joining the Teachers Group. I was very surprised.

We were going to formally join the Teachers Group. The normal procedure was for a new member to have a meeting with one of the Tvind ‘Distribution Group’ –
Kirsten Larsen, Amdi Petersen, Bodil Ross Sørensen or Gretha Flintegaard. You would listen to a prepared speech, and then go away and think about it. We had to come back within a few days with a decision.

At that time the first step was usually a two year probation period of two years, followed by a second ceremony when you would undertake to join the Teachers group for an indefinite period, if you wanted to. I agreed to the two years.

We were invited to join a working trip helping to renovate a Tvind ship near Malaga, in Spain, where the ceremony was to take place. About 100 people were initiated into the TG that time. Afterwards there was a kind of jobs market – jobs in the TG were written up on bits of paper and pasted up all round the hall, so you could choose. It was incredible. It was like a supermarket of possibilities.

I chose to become supervisor of a group that would go to Zimbabwe as soon as the country was liberated from white supremacist rule. And after that, I hitch-hiked straight home to Denmark.

In 1979, Zimbabwe was not yet free. While we waited, our team went to Turkey for a few months to get ready to go to Zimbabwe. It was called The School for Politics and Skills. We thought Turkey would be a similar developing country where we could learn our new role. We were in Turkey the day Zimbabwe got independence – I remember the headline in a Turkish newspaper.

When we got to Zimbabwe, we worked to set up schools for returning refugees. I was in Zimbabwe for eight years (1980-88). It was hard work, the first two or three years were very rough – we lived, ate and slept like the local people, just eating the same food and sleeping on rush mats – we didn’t have proper beds. It was years before we moved into a proper house – we built it ourselves. For the first four years, I was in a team constructing a technical school, then for the next four I was country leader.

It was a fantastic time. But oddly one of the things that I remember most was the kind of racism the Africans had towards us. They were used to seeing white faces – white farmers in control. Now suddenly there were a lot of new white people around and they found that difficult to handle. They couldn’t cope with their own freedom. For years they used to call us ‘The Dirty Danes’. The students and teachers were reluctant to participate in what we were doing or work for the school. Once there was a full scale riot and we had to run away into the bush. We spent a long time discussing these contradictions….

Financially, we were not well off. We were poor and the projects were poor. We didn’t receive a salary. Our expenses were covered, and it gradually became a system – annual travel to our home country, annual clothes and symbolic pocket money. Funds and foreign currency in Zimbabwe were thin and had been for years, so there was hardly any money for anything.

It was during this time that the Teachers Group started to go to other countries in southern Africa, like Mozambique, where there were much more opportunities for funding and hard currency. The war in Mozambique was going on and foreign aid agencies were trying to do a lot in the country. It was during the late 1980s that DAPP first got involved in Mozambique selling old clothes, because part of Frelimo had started importing and selling old clothes from Europe in the country.

It was a secret at first that the clothes brought down from Europe were sold and not given away. Later it was agreed that it could be admitted. Clothes sales to DAPP in Zambia, -Namibia, -Zimbabwe, ADPP in Guinea-Bissau, -Angola and -Mozambique rocketed during the late 80s and 90s, for example the amount of clothes to the mentioned countries went up from 500 tons a year to 5000 tons a year in a very short space of time. Clothes sales became a major source of funding for Tvind projects in southern Africa.

It was in Mozambique that the technique was spearheaded of changing second hand clothes sold in the country to hard currency – dollars. It started with a construction company started in Mozambique by a Teachers Group member called Jens Otto Laustsen. The ADPP Mozambique construction company would do development work for the government and the World Bank and other big organisations and get paid in hard currency. After that, the idea came to use the second hand clothes trade to eran hard currency in the same way. And the same sort of thing started happening, in Angola, and on a smaller scale in Zimbabwe, Zambia and other African countries.

In 1988, I went to work for ADPP in Angola. The situation in Angola was dramatically different because of the oil reserves in the country and the presence of big international oil companies, like Conoco. Suddenly there was the possibility of making a lot of real development work, with funds available to pay for it. I went to Cabinda, the oil-rich enclave, to work with the American oil company Chevron. My job was to work with the Angolan ministry of energy and Chevron to establish projects – although that one was not successful, a big range of other projects were receiving money from oil companies.

This situation gave us a lot of access to hard currency instead of Angolan local currency. For example, an oil company like Conoco would get interested in helping to sponsor development work. It would want to employ an ADPP person on a salary paid for in dollars out of its special projects budget. We saw how they used the hard currency in Mozambique, and we started to do the same.

The idea to use salaries as a way of getting hard currency really came from Denmark. This was a time – the early 1990s – when Tvind in Denmark was really coming under a lot of pressure from the Danish government because of the huge subsidies it was getting. Funds in Denmark were really drying up, so Amdi Petersen got the idea that project leaders in Africa ought to be paid in hard currency, which would give the Teachers Group a lot more money. The funds would be available if we looked for them, he said.

As much hard currency as possible had to be sent back to the Teachers Group in Denmark. So that’s what we did. When Amdi realised that it was possible for Humana to actually employ project leaders and draw a salary on the head of each, he started to do that too.

It was about this time Amdi developed a plan called “Five, Ten, Fifteen, Twenty”. It meant a target of five million croner the first year, ten million croner the second, and so on, in hard currency which was supposed to be sent back from Africa to the Teachers Group. The first year was 1993. We all had to work incredibly hard to achieve this plan, which left us all utterly exhausted.

I was in charge of the accounts in Angola. In the beginning, the hard currency would be money we had directly earned in salaries. Later on, it was local currency exchanged into hard currency. We did it through the second hand clothes, like in Mozambique. The money we earned from selling the clothes in Angola and Mozambique would cover core expenses for the development projects within those countries and an amount agreed upon (about 75-80% of earnings from the sale of second hand clothes) would just be exchanged for hard currency, either internally, or at a bank, so it would be available for the Teachers Group covering the salaries for the Teacher Groups staff in Africa. Did we have a donation in hard currency and some of the costs from that donation could be spent in local currency, we would set aside an equivalent bit of hard currency to cover salaries on behalf of the staff in Africa for the Teachers Group.

This is how it would work. ADPP would start, say, a fishing company in Angola. The fishing company would have to have nets and boats and so on. A big oil company like Conoco would offer to help sponsor the deal and they would give, say, $100,000, in hard currency.

The money would be split three ways. About $50,000 might be actually used on the project. About $25,000 might go on salaries to the ADPP project leaders – of course, that would go straight to Denmark. Then there would be another quarter – say $25,000 in running costs and expenses, which was possible to be spent locally in local currency. The local currency would be supplied by the ‘second-hand clothes fund’. In that way ADPP in Angola would be able to exchange local currency (earned from selling second hand clothes) to hard currency which was needed to cover staff salaries to be sent to the Teachers Group.

In reality, that $25,000 in hard currency would also go back to Denmark. It would not be spent in Angola at all. The money in local currency to keep the project going would really come from somewhere else. The $25,000 had been funded twice so there was a hidden surplus. It never showed clearly in the books and nobody noticed it. You just told Conoco you had spent all $100,000 on the project.

Sometimes hard currency for ADPP never even arrived in Angola – it was just transferred straight to an ADPP account in Denmark.

As more and more tons of old clothes were sent to Angola from Europe, so more and more money could be converted to hard currency. In 1995, Angola received about 2000 tons of clothes from Humana/UFF in Europe. The 2000 tons were a donation from ADPP and Humana. They were sold locally at, say, from 50 cents to 75 cents a kilo – a profit of something like $500,000 in local currency. Half would be spent on projects, but the other half would be converted to hard currency to cover ‘salaries’ – in US cash.

By 1995, around $30,000 a week in surplus hard currency was being sent back from Angola to Denmark.

Often, the money was converted into hard currency at a bank in Luanda and transferred to Denmark by money order, to a Teachers Group account at the Bikuben bank in Fredericia.

Occasionally it was taken from Africa to Denmark in cash. I travelled from Angola to Denmark two or three times in 1994 and again in 1995, with something like $30,000 in cash in my ‘stomach purse’. I had to give the money to Niels Peter Holst in Vejle. He was a member of the Teachers Group who knew both sides of the operation – the work in Africa and the Teachers group economy. He took the money and did whatever he had to do with it.

The same kind of “hard-currency-trick” was being used all over Africa in DAPP, although much less so in Zimbabwe, Zambia and countries like Namibia where there was very little opportunity for earning hard currency. It worked well in Mozambique with the construction company, because so many aid agencies wanted to work there. And the old clothes was good business.

It also started working to an extent with farms and plantations in Angola, Zimbabwe and Guinea Bissau – but that is a much more long term project with not so much investment from outside. The Teachers group started thinking about it as a way of getting an income other than clothes.

Humana closed its Danish headquarters in Vejle in 1996? – the Teachers group decided it was no longer a good thing to stay in Denmark and moved its world headquarters to Zimbabwe. Amdi chose Zimbabwe apprearently because it was a more professional and civilised place at the time than most of the other countries, where it was easier to get around and get things done.

I’m sure that most of the hard currency moved from Africa to the Teachers Group went towards buying the luxury apartments in Fisher Island and the expensive flats in Miami for high up people in the Teachers Group. But looking back on it, the years 1992 and 1993 were when Five, Ten, Fifteen, Twenty was started and the years when Tvind was buying Fisher Island.
(above to be taken out as this is not really my first hand knowledge)!!!!!!!

None of us knew much about Maima and luxury apartments in Fisher Island at the time. Rikke Viholm talked about apartments, but we didn’t see any photographs. We didn’t realise how expensive they were. Some of us knew something about Plagborgvej in Grindsted – the expensive luxury property in Denmark that Amdi is living in, it was a place that only a few selected people ever got to visit. We just thought the Teachers Group knew how to use the money best – full stop. The money would be invested in the projects. It was something you had to agree with.

Towards the end of my time in the Teacher’s Group, it was no longer pleasant. There was no opportunity to develop myself. I began to realise that the Teachers Group was not a community of equal people. Some people were more equal than others. Then there were the funny little gifts that some people got as they rose up. A pair of Cartier sunglasses, a Mont Blanc fountain pen, a smart silk blouse. I never got as far as the inscribed Teachers Group watch. I realised I was being bought off by little material things. I felt very uncomfortable.

Finally, I left in 1995 – keeping up with all those plans was incredibly hard work and very stressful. It was always fulfil this plan, achieve that, and if necessary make other people’s lives hell. In the end, I didn’t like the person I became. I left the Teachers Group after 15 years came back to Europe. Betrayed? Not quite – but disappointed, and very confused.

Ends

Britta Junge was interviewed on Danish TV programmes in around 1999, leading to the Danish police enquiry and prosecution of Amdi Petersen and other senior members of the Teachers Group Economy, 2003-2006. She is now a special needs teacher in Jutland, Denmark.

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Do you have a story? Tell us

TG 1978-84

Patricia Brunklaus came to Tvind at the age of nineteen, in 1977. This bright, young and intelligent Dutch woman thought she was going to join an organisation which really fought for major changes to improve the world, especially for the ones in need in the Third World.   It all ended in a big deception in 1984 and she left the Teachers Group. Up till today she’s fighting feelings being betrayed by the Teachers Group and being used by Amdi Petersen.

By Han Gommeren

‘In my opinion Amdi Petersen is brilliant, a genius, but he is also frantic. He suffers from megalomania.’ Those are the first words to come up in the mind of Patricia Brunklaus, confronted with the name of cult leader Amdi Petersen. The Dutch woman, now 45 years of age, was a member of the Teachers Group for six years and left it in 1984. She first saw Petersen in 1977, at one of the well known acquaintance weekends for new students at a gym in Tvind. At that time she had never heard of Amdi Petersen, nor did she know anything about the Tvind-structure as it was being built by the guru and his inner circle.

‘Suddenly a tall, handsome man entered the gym with a harem of women around him. I kind of liked that, 19 years of age as I was, feeling freedom in the hippie period and aching for a better world. Because I had heard that was what Tvind was all about. And that’s what Amdi always drummed into our mind: we were revolutionaries, fighting for a new world. You never initiated a conversation with him. He did that, he was the leader.’

‘Amdi was an attractive man, tall, dark blond hair and he was quite charming. The question was always which of the women would be his favourites, he always had a harem around him. Many of them must have shared the bed with him. He gave them power. At the same time sex was a taboo in Tvind. None of us was allowed to have a family or a relationship outside the Teachers Group, some of the men even got themselves sterilized. Sometimes couples came into Tvind, but they always were separated and sent to different places to work for Tvind. After I left Tvind the purpose of this became clear to me: if people get intimate they might get to talk with each other what was happening with them. That might make them strong enough to take the decision to leave this cult-like organisation. In this way Amdi Petersen was maintaining absolute power.’

‘From the beginning Tvind has been fighting against society, trying to grow by drawing money out of it. By evading tax.     I was, for example, one of the first foreigners studying in Tvind. To make certain that they wouldn’t miss any governmental subsidy for the schools, they pretended different courses to be one course. In that way not more than one at ten students seemed to come from outside Denmark, which was a condition for public subsidizing. I didn’t really mind this at that time, as I was convinced it was all done for the good cause: working on a new world and helping the poor in the Third World.’

Members of the Teachers Group, like Patricia, worked day and night and had to live from five Danish crowners a day. ‘And even then we needed to have a coupon to to justify our expenses.’ She even recalls the name of the Teachers Group-member who checked them, a financial man now high in the Tvind-hierarchy. ‘We had so little money that after closing time of the local supermarket in the place I lived then we went to the boxes in which the date-expired cheese was dumped. We were often so hungry, the cheese was still possible to be eaten, so we ate it.

Ambitious

As Patricia says she was very ambitious, she wanted to start a Tvind-school for new development workers in Holland. Although Amdi Petersen didn’t like this idea at all, she didn’t give up easily. ‘After long discussions Amdi allowed me and Jan Orbons to write a plan in Denmark for a school in Holland. The first plan he rejected, he agreed with the second one when we spoke about it in hotel La Kolk at Rømø, which at that time recently had been bought by Tvind. When we wanted to leave the room, he said ‘no’ and suddenly opened a window: Jan and I had to leave the room through the window. It was one of his ways of humiliating members of the Teachers Group. Though it were mostly men being humiliated. It was part of the system. Amdi had everything thought out, he must have started planning his empire not long after the founding of Tvind.’

It was 1983. Just before Patricia started with the school in Holland, in Oud-Gastel, a small village in the south-west of the country, she got an unannounced visit from the guru himself and his partner Kirsten Larsen. Patricia explained that the course could be given to the students for just a small amount of money because she was receiving an unemployment benefit. So she figured the students didn’t have to pay her any salary. ‘After all we were working for the benefit of the world, I thought then.’ But this caused rage with Amdi Petersen, she tells. ‘He demanded that the students should pay me and two other members of the Teachers Group a salary. Thirteen of the students left at once, because they were unable to pay for it or did not agree.’ Amdi showed no interest in the students. ‘It was obviously the money, that it was all about.’ Just as her unemployment benefit her salary immediately was put on a bank account of Tvind like the income from all the members of the Teachers Group, following the principle of common economy within Tvind.

It opened Patricia’s eyes more or less. But still she didn’t decide to leave Tvind, even got some more young rebellious Dutch people into the Teachers Group. The Tvind-course ended after one year and then she was sent to Zimbabwe as a development worker. In that period things got too tough for her. ‘I had a relationship with someone, who wrote me letters. But all my letters were opened and then translated into Danish, because a few members of the Teachers Group were suspicious. And so it came clear I had a relationship with someone from outside the Teachers Group. I was interrogated one and a half day without any break about this. That is brainwashing, I should think. And after that one and a half day I decided that it was better to end my relationship, you even get convinced that it is the best. You really want to end the discussion. But some later on, when you get a rest and try to find yourself back again, you think: what am I doing here?’

Her biggest deception came, when Amdi arranged a trip to Sout

Tvind – seen from the inside

By Britta Rasmussen

I joined Tvind in 1976, because I had a very strong desire to do something in order to fight for a better world instead of just sitting around in left wing organisations at the university and just talk about it.

In the western part of Jutland something new and exciting was happening. The people at Tvind were building a gigantic windmill in order to prove that nuclear power should be banned from Denmark. People travelled in old buses from Denmark to Asia, where they learned about the conditions of the poor of the world by living with the poor people of the villages.

I heard about a fantastic offer The Teachers Group had. For 7 months we should learn carpentry/masonry/plumbing etc by building some new school houses at Tvind, because the Travelling Folk High School was expanding quickly in those years. After that we should prepare ourselves for a travel to South East Asia, which lasted 3 months. After returning home we should give lectures and write books about what we had learned. And everything was free. We should only pay with our labour. So I quit my studies, gave away my books and records and joined Tvind, 22 years old.

The world was out of order in 1976 with the always existing threat of a nuclear war, tension between East and West, massacres of innocent civilians, apartheid, dictators and military regimes. At Tvind we identified ourselves with our heroes and comrades of arms, the guerrillas of Basque, Palestine, Southern Africa and South America. By building the schools we supported the fight for freedom for all suppressed people of the world. We were told by the leader of Tvind Mogens Amdi Petersen, that we were “the flowers of all Danish Youth” – we understood that it was essential to keep up the good work.

Alone man could not do anything against all the misery in the world. Our only chance was to join The Teachers Group and together continue to build new schools from which new students could travel to the Third World, see the misery and realise that they too had to do something . The Teachers Group should grow and grow. It was the only way to avoid a gigantic nuclear war, which would destroy all existing life.

During 9 years I worked at Tvind, at first as a student and later as a life long member of The Teachers Group. At first I worked with children from the age of 11/2 to 14 at the Free School at Tvind. The parents of the children were travelling either as students or teachers at The Travelling Folk High School. For 3 months they did not see each other. Later I worked with monkeys, lions, camels and criminal youths at a small zoo Christianshede Mini Zoo close to Silkeborg in Jutland, Denmark After that I was cook at the school Ake Pecha in Virginia, USA, where 40 more or less criminal youths were living.

In The Teachers Group it is not accepted that every man or woman is a unique being, that we all have weak and strong sides, that we are different individuals and all able to get good ideas. In The Teachers Group it was only the plans and ideas of the leader Mogens Amdi Petersen, that were realised.

If an ordinary member of The Teachers Group approached the leader with her own ideas she was insulted and jeered at for trying. Two seconds after the scorned and ridiculed member crept out of the door Amdi Petersen launched the very same idea himself pretending it was his own.

To the ordinary members of the Teachers Group these things are not known – we were let to believe that Amdi Petersen was a genius – that the plans he made were the very best – if they failed it was because of teachers not living up to their best.

As a member of the Teachers Group you are able to perform any job, without any other qualification than being a member of the Teachers group. You are not allowed to say I cannot do it, if you say so it is because you do not give yourself 100 % for the cause. Then you are a lousy comrade. And this you will be told by the leaders in front of a lot of other members of the Teachers Group, so of course you try to do better than your best.

At all times you have to anticipate the moves of your students and if they do get away at 3 o’clock in the morning, steal your neighbour’s car and rob some stores in the nearest town, it is your fault, you did not do your best.

I did not like conflicts and tried to become friends with my students. At all times we worked very hard and just when you were about to reach the goals that you had been told by Amdi Petersen, he changed them, so you had to run even faster.

In the beginning when we had bought the zoo we were told by Amdi Petersen that the zoo was supposed to be a money earning business – like an ordinary zoo. None of the teachers at the zoo knew anything about lions, monkeys, snakes, bears or about running a business, but we tried our best and worked very hard. The fences were old and rusty so many animals ran off and one night somebody had broken the lock of the lion cage. We were told by Amdi to have the lions killed for safety reasons. The zoo was open to the public and in the weekends the students from the other Tvind School came visiting and stayed the weekend. We had to take care of the students while their normal teachers went to Builders Weekend at other Tvind Schools. We were very busy.

But suddenly after two years he apparently changed his mind and sent us 3 Danish students, who could not be placed in normal schools. Now we had to run the zoo and take care of the students, without being educated to either and without being asked if we would like to do it. The leaders bought another house in the village for the students and sent us 7 Swedish Youths who all sniffed glue. They terrorised the other students and the teachers totally. We were all afraid of them. They occupied the first floor of the house and did not want to participate in any program. Nobody ever criticised the leaders for sending so many impossible students to us – it was our fault that it did not work out because we did not work hard enough.

Two or three times during the 9 years I ran off to visit my parents without permission, because I was so tired and had to sleep, but I always returned after a good nights sleep. I was a part of a struggle and would not give in. I thought that some of the leaders were too stupid and thinking too much about the good of conflicts and other Tvind principles, but I still thought the world of Amdi.

At the large meetings of The Teachers Group I managed to keep my head very low and not attract any attention from the leaders. During the years at Tvind I have always kept in touch with my family and visited them with students and alone several times a year. They said to me, that they supported what I was doing as long as I was happy. They visited the schools and were only shown the good sides like all other outsiders. We never told anybody about our problems.

In 1984 I was told by the leader of the school in Virginia that I could not go home and visit my mother who suddenly had discovered that she suffered from breast cancer. I was shocked and shaken. The leaders said that I would leave The Teachers Group if I was allowed to travel to Denmark. It had never crossed my mind – I only wanted to be with my mother.

After a lot of phone calls across the Atlantic Ocean and discussions with the leaders I stole my passport from the office and hitch hiked at 4 o’clock in the morning to Norfolk. When I reached New York I phoned home and my mother wired money for the plane ticket.

At leaving The Teachers Group I was 3 months pregnant with my daughter, but I did not know for sure. If I had waited another day at the school in Virginia I should have gone to the annual medical examinations where they would have discovered the pregnancy. Other teachers at the school were forced to abortion. The members of The Teachers Group could not waste their precious time with having their own children.

My daughter was born in march 1985 and from this moment my life changed completely. She was the most important person in my life. When my daughter was two months old my mother died, but she had been very happy to become a grandmother.

After leaving The Teachers Group I only had my daughter and my family. Of course I missed the nice members of The Teachers Group, but when you have left you are a traitor and they do not know you any more even though you have spent many years together.

First I had to get an education, find new friends, a job. Then I had to find out what had happened in the world in the years I had been gone. We had had all information about the world from Amdi Petersen, because we stopped reading newspapers in 1978, and I realised slowly that we had been deceived. The situation in the world was not like he had told us. He had for instance claimed that the fascists were about to take over the power in Denmark in 1979. We had to go home to our parents and burn all old pictures of former friends and family, so that nobody could trace us if we had to go under ground.

I realised that The Teachers Group is a sect – just like Moon Movement, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology. There is no difference.

In 1994 I started writing down all the stories from my time in The Teachers Group and to reconstruct the years from the letters I had send to my parents, sister and grandmother. It was a great relief to get it all written down – I have probably forgotten the worst things – many friends helped me to correct the language and criticise it and finally a very brave publisher accepted the book.

I can strongly recommend the method of writing down everything, it is very good therapy and others may learn from what you have experienced. If you would like to tell me your story  britta.rasmussen.aarslev@get2net.dk

In 1997 and 1998 a group of former members of The Teachers Group have met with our families. This has been very good, but some former members are still afraid to meet with more than two people and they get sick just thinking about and hearing the name Tvind, because of what they have experienced there. They need help from a professional to get on with their lives.

This is an extract from 82 full pages written in Danish: “13 år under Tvind”

by Else Waale

Tvind from the beginning.

I joined the place Tvind in 1974 in the age of 50 and I left again in 1987. During this 13 years I have seen the place develop from the three schools: The travelling Folk Highschool, The Teaches Training College, and the boardingschool for children from 14-17, to a world wide undertaking with more than 30 schools in Denmark . I don`t know how many abroad. When I joined we were about 50 people working there, and we all shared the same conditions and functioned as a real democracy. (I believed). We were all the kind of people who felt responsible for others, and specially since most of us had been travelling in countries with very bad living conditions for the natives, we knew about the suffering, and we wanted to help making a better world. Exactly those feelings are exploited to the limit everywhere, where Tvind is operating. When they once has got a foot into some place they never let go and hand over the tools to the natives. They want the full and aboslute control, and if they ever get it in a country, it will be as bad as in the Sovjet Union, with a never resting control over everybody.

As a fact, at the time I joined, one had to promise, that it was for life, and that from now on the group decided, what I had to do unconditionally  – individualism was a very bad word. From now on you could own nothing, not money, not time, not yourself.

That was ok with me. I wanted to work for better schools  – that was the first goal. My life got meaning and I had very good comrades rround me. Some years later one could join on a 2 year contract. That would make it easier to sort some out again.

But I was there for good. Very soon I found out, that it was not easy. Because of my age and my not very best health, I had a limited working time. But most of the others was working very hard, for instance with the old buses, and they were always short of time.

But when we had the meetings, they had to participate, and some, with maybe 20 hours hard work behind them.   If someone fall asleep, he had to get on his feet and stand up for the rest of the meeting.  I have seen one of them, more than one time, standing there and then suddenly fall straight to the floor. And then there was shouting at him, demanding that he should take part in the discussion and give some opinion. And he could not.

I did not like it, but thought, it might be necessary, since everybody else seems to find it ok.

Since then I have experienced lots of that kind of meetings, where somone was assaulted with angry words and none to defend her. Also I have been through that several times and afterwards you are worth nothing, and nobody comforts you.

But the positive experiences was still the most.  To see the developing of the children, of which many of them were thrown out of their school for bad behaving, or wanted to leave because they were treated badly and had no self-confidence. To see them grow and bloom and become responsible and social behaving, was a gift. And that was the job done by the very good teachers around them.

And I have seen much of that, since I have been working on boarding schools as a secretary the most of the time.

The children was not the victims.

We were!

Every second weekend all students was going home and all the time we had a good connections with the parents.

But that did not mean, that we were free to do whatever we wanted, unless we were still so enthusiastic, that we just wanted to obey orders.

All these weekends was spent with building new schools, sports halls, swimming pools, whatever.

I hated those weekends, because I did not like to work in a line with hard physical work.

I am too short and could not follow. I liked it the best, when my job was to sew curtains or covers.

In the evenings there was entertaining, and we had good entertainers, not least Amdi himself.

Everybody was hanging around him, listening to him, admiring him.

It is just too much to mention everything, but there two things, which did hurt me very much.

The one thing was, that I was denied to go and see my sick mother. She suffered from Alzheimers, and when I finally saw here, she did not know who I was. At the time I wanted to see her she was more conscious and she suffered. I shall never forget all these teachers standing around me and shouting at me for my demand. We had common summer. The children were home for almost 2 month, and we had important work to do.

The other thing was, that I was forced to burn everything concerning my former life. All the photos and diaries and worst of all – all the letters I wrote to my mother, 100`s of them she had kept from during the world war two, where I was living in Copenhagen and up till now. Today I miss those letters, because there was interesting information in them.

That is part of the politics – you are not allowed to have any kind of private life.

And that is not good enough for a human being.

Oh, yea, I remember another bad thing. It was when in February 1983 I was told, that the ship “Activ” was lost and some of my friends drowned.   They were all teachers and they were on their way home for a meeting. When we were called to those meetings, it was unthinkable not to come, no matter what. If there was a snowstorm, you had to come, there was no excuse for staying away. So they died for it.

Some years I was working in Grindsted, where there was a common place for all accounts for the schools. I now was the secretary for not only one school, but for all the boarding schools, and I had so much to do, that I sometimes worked the whole night through, two times a week. Of course I made faults and some school leaders complained. We had a meeting with Amdi in my office and he told me about the complaints. My excuse was, that I had too much to do. He said no, that is not the reason. I had to be more careful. There was no shouting or anger, just this: I did not have too much to do.

I had a beautiful room, where I worked and slept, with a big screen window out to the nature. I looked out, and there was the snow. I looked out again and it was summer. There was no time for enjoying nature.

But anyway, something happened. A young man came to take over, and to prove, that it could all be done without mistakes. I got something else to do and had still enough. But he could not make it all in time, and then he was locked in, in a room in the basement, his meals was brought to him and he was ordered to stay and continue, until he was up to date.

Then a new idea came up.

The head of the place should distribute all work between us. She sat by one side of a table and one of us at the other side. Both had a microphone and between us was a tape recorder. Then she talked the task into the recorder, and I (for instance) was telling ok and my name in my microphone. Even we could see each other, it was not possible to speak directly.

I went with my task, finished the job and talked it into the tape. And then went to get another task. There was no more the big bunches of work waiting on my desk in the morning.

I had no longer any resposibility to catch up with the time. It was no longer my concern.

And that became awful. I felt more and more like a robot. And one day I could not stand it any more. I broke down and the end of that was, that I went back to Tvind, where I spend the next couple of years, the last year as a teacher for adults in a handcraft school . Something happened here, that made me finally want to get away for good. And so I did.

At last I broke down, and that was of course because I was not wholehearted enough. They would say. What started like real democracy developed to a totalitarianism where nobody doubted who made all decisions. There were directors, inspectors, controllers, control, control and control again, everywhere. I had enough.

I had a mini bycycle, and I took the most important clothes in my rucksack and went through the sanded path behind Tvind to the nearest grocery 2 km away. I ordered a taxi and went to the railway station.

And I gave myself the greatest gift ever: the rest of my life. The right to decide for myself, what to do.

And I owned nothing.

Today I have a very good life, living in a little old house and having everything necessary including access to the Internet

My mother died long before I left Tvind, but I see my sons and my lovely grandchildren.

Every morning I look out into my beautiful garden and think:” Oh what a wonderful morning.”

This is only very short about a long time experience, and if you have questions (once I was the tourist guide on Tvind) just ask:

Else Waale   ewaale@get2net.dk

PS. Of all the people who were in Tvind when I joined, there is only a handful left. Most of us are outside now, and most don`t want to talk about it anymore. We were all followed and sometimes they could talk people back again by promising something. Also I was offered much better conditions, if I would only come back. But that I felt awful. I was not able to say: Give me good conditions and I will forget the injustice against my friends the feeling of slavery, slavery for most and luxury for a few. We know the pattern. The slavery maybe would be at an end for me, but not for all the others. If I said yes to do that, I would feel like a prostitute. One who is for sale. I may be naive, but I am not for sale.

Else Waale

Steen Thomsen was a member of the Teachers’ Group but resigned in 1998, after 26 years with Tvind.   He was head master of Winestead Hall School in England 1991-1998.  He has since written a report to the Danish government, and supplied this affidavit:

An affidavit

given by Steen Thomsen

WITNESS STATEMENT OF STEEN THOMSEN

I, STEEN THOMSEN, of  [address omitted]  Denmark, SAY AS FOLLOWS:

I first heard about the organisation called Tvind in 1971 when I was a student at Aarhus University.   I was a student of political science.   One day I saw an advertisement and on it was written “Do you want to go to India?”. I thought that this sounded interesting and I was fed up with what I was doing at university so I thought I would give it a try.

Consequently I went for a meeting [led by Amdi Peterson].  He was very charismatic. The meeting was to decide about setting up a new kind of training college which, when translated, into English means “Necessary Teacher Training College”.  The college was run by an organisation founded by Peterson. It originally consisted of Peterson and a group of women.

I was excited about this. It looked like a big social opportunity where you would meet many other people of a young age. It was a new thing.

It was also political in a way. At the time I was very upset about what was happening in respect of nuclear power and the war in Vietnam and other political events in those days. I suppose I wanted something to be done about it and I thought that this was an opportunity.

We thought that we would meet various people around the world and learn from them and later start schools in Denmark and provide people with information so that they could also take a stand as political persons and start a different system.

It was never specifically stated that Tvind was political. Those words were not used. But you could definitely say that the organisation was Maoist. Maoist text books were used in the schools at which I taught.

Travel

My first year with Tvind was spent travelling

I went on a bus trip to India to see the conditions of the people in India.  I remember one time I wanted to take photographs of the scenery. So, I stood up and put my head through the skylight of the bus and began to take photographs of the scenery.   I suddenly felt somebody pulling my leg to pull me down and I saw that it was the group leader, Mikala Gottlob. She said “What the hell are you doing? Do you think we have come here to look at nature? We have come here to meet other people. This is a political thing. What the hell are you doing?”

Training

I became one of the first pupils of the Necessary Teacher Training College. I was 24. I started as a trainee teacher. We could take a State approved exam. The [Danish] Government in 1972 approved the teaching house.   (This approval has since been cancelled by the Government).

The first year was used partially for travelling to India.  After our return to Denmark, we worked for three months and saved money to buy houses around the country. Groups of 12 to 15 of us would buy a house where we would stay for the next three months.

Almost for the whole of the second year, we worked saving up money for the education and for Tvind.   We worked in the Danish industry.   A part of this year I spent working in a slaughter house.   We had to learn through working in factories, how to be in the situation of a “parent”.   We were told that we would only be good teachers if we saw society from that perspective.   The fact was, however, that this was meant for radicalising us into true leftist   (read: Tvind Cult people).

The third and the fourth year of our education, most of the time we worked as trainees in Danish schools, whilst in the late afternoons, nights and weekends and school holidays, we studied the same subjects as those studied at normal teacher training colleges full time for four years.

Our four years led in the end to an exam. We had now had quite some teaching practice, but our theoretical achievements I must admit were of a very low standard.   However, we had now got our first part of Amdi Petersen´s training of us all in order for us to learn to live the Tvind way: No private life, no private economy, total loyalty towards our Big Leader, endless work, little sleep.

I then taught in various mainstream schools.   There were, as far as possible, always at least two Tvind teachers from the Necessary Teachers Training College at the same school.   This – I learned later – was arranged in order for Mr Petersen to maintain his control over us, for him to ensure that we stayed loyal and prepared for joining the Teachers’ Group.

Teachers’ group

In [1977], Amdi Peterson telephoned me and invited me to join the teachers’ group.  I was very impressed and flattered that he had rung me.

In 1979 we built an “independent, free, private school” in Denmark. We had to build the school ourselves.

We worked like mad at this school. At weekends we would work at least 16 hours a day and then teach all week. It was meant to keep us together but I mainly see this as a part of controlling us because we were so exhausted.    We did not have time to think for ourselves.

We were permanently exhausted. That was our life. We were expected to devote our entire lives to Tvind.

Extinction of past

In [1978 or 1979] we, the teachers’ group, were told by Peterson to extinguish our past.     We were told that we should go home to wherever we came from, where we had our childhood things and take all those things, especially letters and photographs of our family and ourselves and so on, and burn them.

I had a girlfriend at that time who was also in the organisation.   (We joined Tvind at the same time and came from the same area.)   We had stored our things in the loft at my parents’ farm.

One day we went home to my parents and while they were having a sleep after lunch, we went up into the loft and took all our things and went outside and burned them.   So now my parents have very few pictures of us left.

Family life

We were not encouraged to go to see our families. I would have liked to have spent much more time with my parents and with my sisters. And I also knew that I would have liked to have had a family of my own. But it was almost unthinkable and in reality impossible to have families and have children.

If I broke any of these obligations I would be very unpopular within the organisation.

I have, for example, in a similar way as hundreds of other TG members, tried to be pulled out in front of a common meeting of 100–200 persons. Once Amdi Peterson asked, in front of everyone, “Well, Steen Thomsen, are you really working for the Teachers’ Group? What is going on in your mind since you have not done this or that? Are you thinking of love life, having children, your own little fucking house? Tell us what is going on!”   In such situations it is about one’s entire existence. No-one will assist you. You will face the loss of ALL your so-called friends or comrades if you do not do the right thing in such a situation and in the same split second. So you admit your ”mistakes” even though your inner ego speaks against the lie that is now expressed through your lips.

If you pursued your own thing, family life or other private life you would be considered as very anti-social person who was not working for the same cause. At the end of the day Tvind would come first. You did not air your own doubts about the organisation or your inner wishes for having a family life or anything.

You were not allowed to be close to anyone. Marriage, even within the cult, was discouraged.  My relationship with my girlfriend who joined the organisation with me did not last.  A few families existed within the organisation but they were very few.   I think they could be counted on one hand. And they had a very difficult time.

Communication

Newspapers were forbidden in the organisation. We were forbidden to talk to the press.  This also counted for myself, being the Headmaster of a Tvind school.

We were told to put down as little as possible on paper and not to write letters in case they were intercepted.   About three years ago members were told by Peterson not to use normal public phones and told to use mobile phones, which could not be intercepted.   In the last years communication was mainly done via the Internet.  On Internet communications we used PGP, “Pretty Good Privacy” which had to be decoded every time.

Meetings

At meetings, we were given handouts which were numbered. This was so that Amdi Peterson or whoever was holding the meeting would ensure that every single handout was returned after the meeting. It is partly due to this that I do not have any papers or document to support what I am saying here.

We had [many meetings].   At the meetings we would gather to discuss Tvind policy.   However decisions always had to be unanimous. No votes were taken. If anybody dissented such dissent was ruthlessly crushed. A meeting did not finish until everybody had agreed a decision. There was huge pressure applied to conform with the proposal.   I am now sure that this was a form of thought control.

There was one meeting which took place on an apple plantation at Dangaard, Western Denmark.

At that time, sometime in the late 1970s, a rumour was circulating that somebody had shot at Amdi Peterson. The teachers were very upset and affected by this.   I think that it might have been true or it might have been used just to raise our anxiety.

This extreme paranoia within the teachers’ group was so great that in those days we looked out for bombs under our cars. We were shown how to open letters without triggering an explosive device.

At the meeting at the apple plantation some of us were called into a windowless room.  We were asked  [by Amdi Peterson]  if we would be prepared to kill the person next to us if they should ever leave the Teachers´ Group or act as traitors.   I remember that there was one, a nurse, who said she couldn’t kill another friend so she was kicked out from the room.

Money

We had to give all our money to Tvind.    When I joined the Teachers’ Group I had to sign an undertaking to covenant all my income to the group.

I have not ever seen any accounts for the money which was invested. Peterson said one day that he thought it was best if we did not see them. He said it would be best not to make copy accounts because it would be too difficult for everybody to see them.

When I was a teacher at mainstream schools nearly all my salary went to Tvind.  For about two years I only had 11 pence per day to live on.  Tvind in return gave me some pocket money.  Tvind even provided us with things that we needed for work and home including clothes. In about 1982 we were told by Andy Peterson at the meeting that we should not be seen buying anything from a shop not even a pair of socks and underwear.  For a while, we were given clothes which were made at a Tvind factory in Casablanca. These did not suit any person and did not fit.

Over the years I have given about £300,000 – £400,000 to the organisation.  I also owned a farm which I inherited from my uncle, which I gave to Tvind.    It was worth about £75,000 – £80,000.

Everybody gave their money and their property.

I think that the money which came from selling in the shops was going to foreign aid.   But another part was sold in the countries meant to be the receivers, instead of being donated to them.    The worst, however, is that the main part of the clothes collected from the Humana/UFF containers is sold to Tvind owned companies especially in Eastern Europe, creating hard cash for Tvind.    This is not what the happy donator is told when he or she is putting second hand things into a Humana/UFF container in Vienna, Copenhagen, Stockholm -I know that money was spent on property and a building in Florida and a luxury ship. The ship was the biggest fibreglass ship in the world and is mainly used to support the luxurious life style of Mr Petersen.

Winestead Hall, Hull

I came to Britain in 1991 as the head teacher of Winestead Hall near Hull.

We gave the impression to outsiders that the school was well run. When it was being inspected on behalf of the charity commission, I only mentioned things that were working. I did not mention all the items which were not. We never admitted to the inspectors that we neither had enough staff nor got the equipment we needed.

We were also told to deny any involvement with Tvind, which was untrue because we were constantly receiving telephone calls and emails from Tvind in Denmark.

I do not know how we managed. There were not enough staff to look after the children. We worked all day and half the night. Sometimes we only had an hour or two sleep. I was the headmaster, but it was also my job to, for example, for example, rinse the sewerage and keep the lousy old boilers running over the night.

Things were never repaired properly. We did not get the equipment that we needed. It was really difficult to get any money for the running of the school. The Tvind board that until 1996 was in charge ensured that the school was exploited as far as possible for the benefit of Tvind. It was also difficult to convince them to spend the money on basic repairs and redecoration. There was very little sports equipment. We were not given sufficient money to fund this. Books were few, and those we had over many years we had donated from local mainstream schools.

Tvind (Amdi Peterson) decided in 1995 that we should lease a number of PCs from Tvind and use a system created at Tvind in Denmark, called The Modern Method of Teaching. This system never worked and was mainly used for promoting the school. Proper advice and teaching given to our very unfortunate students was not given at all. We were totally unable to do so. We were undermanned with very few professional staff, and constantly in the Tvind grip, not leaving us a chance to develop the school as an English school and in the way that our students needed. Certainly, the money (About £50.000 annually per student, paid by local authorities), was not at all used for the benefit of our students.

When the school was being investigated, I was ordered by a leading TG member, Lene Jensen, to burn everything, particularly the CD ROM’s used by Amdi Peterson, enabling him and other top people to control just about any detail at our school. (I never told anybody that, just like any other Tvind headteacher, I had to every weekend answer 330 specific questions about my school from a Tvind produced CD-ROM. My replies were then PGP-encrypted and posted off via E-mail. If anything was considered by the Tvind people in Denmark to be wrong, I was called straight to Denmark. Very frequently, I went by plane to meeting with Mr. Petersen and other leaders, at the expense of the school at Winestead).

School ship

Paul [surname?] was hired to take the children on education cruises. With another teacher he would put them into the boat and go sailing near Scotland.

The boats were poorly maintained and I myself often had to carry out repairs even though I am not qualified to do so.

On one occasion the wheelhouse floor collapsed. The captain, Paul [ ] refused to take the Winestead Viking into the North Sea

The facts and matters in this statement are within my own knowledge and are true or are based on information supplied to me and are true to the best of my knowledge, information and belief.

[Declared] at ………………………………. the ……..th day of …………1999

[Before me], …………………………………………….

FIRST DRAFT: 27 January 1999
Checked, revised & corrected 6 February 2000

Why Steen Thomsen resigned from Tvind

He writes:

My reasons for leaving were many. Most important were

• My school, and other schools in the Tvind cooperation, was destroyed because of Mr.Petersen’s greed. The schools were not any more for the students. They were (and are) money machines
• The total lack of personal freedom. Tvind is a cult, just as much as what we call the Moonies are a cult. As part of the Teachers Group, you do not have the right of speaking or writing, you do not have any private life, you do not have any private possessions. All your life you dedicate to the Cult(Do you think I was a good adviser for a young person, myself sticking in the mud of an extreme, leftist and authoritarian system, the Tvind Cult?)
• The lack of personal friends outside the Cult.
  
• The lack of family life.  (Just about none of the cult members have their own children)

The TOP 30

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FIVE WANTED BY POLICE

All five left Denmark in late 2006. The Danish government has asked police forces abroad for help to locate them, and it is likely they would be charged with fraud if they returned to Denmark

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Mogens Amdi Petersen

Born 1939. Founder of Tvind and of the Teachers Group in 1969-70 and unchallenged leader since.

Built up the Tvind school movement in Denmark in the 1970s, but went ‘underground’ in 1979 and his whereabouts were unknown for 22 years. In 2001 he was found to be living in a $7m luxury apartment in Miami and he was arrested, charged with fraud and extradited to Denmark. In late 2006, after a three year trial in which he was found not guilty, he fled Denmark to avoid a retrial and is now a fugitive, believed to be living in Mexico.

More on Amdi Petersen

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Kirsten Larsen

Joint leader of the Tvind Teachers Group with Amdi Petersen. Often described as ‘Amdi’s chief girlfriend’ and also his regular driver.

Documented as chairman or manager of several key Jersey-registered offshore companies, and owner of a Cayman-registered farming company. A founder director of Fairbank, Cooper and Lyle. One of eight ‘Teachers’ charged with fraud in 2002, now a fugitive abroad and believed to be living in Mexico.

Further information on Kirsten Larsen available on request

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Marlene Gunst

Board member of many Teachers Group companies and private trusts for many years. She is a director of several wealthy Teachers Group companies we have recently located in the USA.

According to Danish police, Gunst played a key part in arranging money transfers for the 1994 purchase of the $9 million Fazenda Jatoba ranch in Brazil. Following Danish police inquiries, she left Denmark for Britain in 2001, using a Kensington mailbox address.

Charged with fraud in 2002, acquitted in 2006, but now a fugitive abroad and believed to be living in Mexico. She has now been intercepted by police at Heathrow Airport and served with legal papers obliging her to attend trial in Denmark.

Further information on Marlene Gunst available on request

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Kirsten Fuglsbjerg (Christie Pipps)

A trained lawyer, connected to many Teachers Group enterprises, key offshore companies and trusts, including recently in the USA. According to Danish police, signed for the Teachers Group’s $9m purchase of Fazenda Jatoba, Brazil in 1994. Has used the name Christie Pipps since 1992.

She has been accused of fraud in two separate cases. A charge of money laundering by Belgian police in 2002 was withdrawn. Also charged with fraud in Denmark, but acquitted in 2006. Now a fugitive abroad, whereabouts unknown.

Further information on Kirsten Fuglsbjerg available on request

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Sten Byrner

According to Danish police, ‘centrally placed’ in Tvind and a key member of the ‘Teachers Group Economy’, the central financial directorate, 1987-92. In 2002 police charged him in relation to funds and trusts he helped manage ten years earlier.

Byrner admitted several minor frauds in the 2002-2006 Teachers Group fraud trial, and received a suspended sentence. He is currently a fugitive outside Denmark, whereabouts unknown, and faces further charges if he returns.

Further information on Sten Byrner available on request

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IN JAIL

Convicted of fraud, January 2009. The only one of six defendants
caught by Danish police in late 2006 – the rest fled abroad

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Poul Jørgensen

Convicted of fraud in Denmark in January 2009 in connection with Teachers Group finances. He was found guilty of embezzlement of 15 million DKK, and tax fraud of 53 million DKK.

Described as ‘Tvind spokesman’ and in day-to-day control of Teachers Group affairs since 1979. Jørgensen is a trained lawyer. He was until 2001 chairman of two key financial trusts – the Humanitarian Fund and the Faelleseje Foundation.

Jørgensen is the only one of six Tvind leaders served with legal papers in late 2006 – five others evaded police and fled abroad to escape prosecution.

Further information on Poul Jørgensen available on request

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FIVE IN THE USA

The most prominent names in our research in the USA

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Mikael Norling

A key Tvind organiser. Current chairman of CCTG, and a director of Planet Aid. Founded the first US Tvind college, IICD Massachusetts, in 1986 and Planet Aid in 1997. He was reported in 2001 to run a Wall Street fundraising office for Planet Aid.

In the 1970s he is notoriously said to have praised Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge dictator responsible for the death of millions in Cambodia’s ‘killing fields’.

Further information on Mikael Norling available on request

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Ester Neltrup

Currently president of Planet Aid, Inc, an organisation she jointly founded in 1997 with Mikael Norling. She is also a former principal of IICD Massachusetts.

We also know that in November 2001 she helped create HPP Inc, an enterprise at the very highest level of Tvind which would have relocated Humana People-to-People to the USA – she was to be secretary. In the event HPP Inc did not get off the ground. However, it indicates that Neltrup is regarded as very senior in the organisation.

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“Lynn Sailsbury”

Danish, but emigrated to England in 1995 and has been involved with AS Properties since 1998. She is on the boards of four US/Florida companies: AS Properties, McCorry USA Corp, Allwoods Trading Inc, and Bostic Inc. She shares a TG condo in Miami, The Sterling Condos, with fellow TG member Ann Marie Moeller. Her real name is “Soerensen.” She is considered to be as close to Amdi Pedersen as is Kirsten Larsen.

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Anne Hansen

President director of AS Properties Ltd, a TG-run company that is the landlord of three US schools.

Danish police consider her a senior member of ‘The Teachers Group Economy‘, the central financial directorate. A founder director of Fairbank, Cooper and Lyle. She has been connected with almost every key offshore account and trust in the TG financial web, and was a signatory of the $9m Floresta Atlantica deal in Brazil in 1994.

Hansen was one of eight TG members accused of money laundering in a failed prosecution in Belgium, 2002.

Further information on Anne Hansen available on request

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Michael Hermann

A German-born accountant, who formed the US/Florida based company World Wide Suppliers Inc. in 1995 with fellow TG member Janice Bostic. The company was changed to Bostic Business Services, and then to Bostic Inc. (dissolved 2005). In 2001, Hermann was given power of attorney for Planet Aid Philadelphia, which closed in 2003. He has also been on the board of U’SAgain in Texas along with Per Jensen and Janice Bostic. His official address is the Humana HQ in Zimbabwe, but he shares several addresses with Janice Bostic, including one at the TG’s Sterling Condos in Miami. He uses several alias names and may be the known TC accountant HERMANN LOTZ.

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MORE FINANCIAL WIZARDS

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Ruth Sejeroe-Olsen

A very senior financial operator, who has been on the board of up to eight Danish-registered Tvind companies, and connected with many of the key offshore companies and private trusts. Danish police say she too played a key role in the acquisition of the $9m Fazenda Jatoba ranch in Brazil in 1994.

Sejeroe-Olsen was charged with fraud by Danish police in 2002, but acquitted in 2006 and no new charges have been made. Her present whereabouts are unknown.

Further information on Ruth Sejeroe-Olsen available on request

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Niels Peter Holst

A top Teachers Group money-man – he is today an officer of an offshore Swiss private trust called Humana and PlanetAid Finance SA, in existence since 2005.

His special responsibilities in the 1990s appear to have included creating hidden financial pathways between Africa and Denmark. A private memo he wrote to Poul Joergensen in 1995 suggests ways of secretly moving money between Humana Holland and Angola to avoid financial scrutiny and tax.

He was also the individual named by a former volunteer, Britta Junge as the person who received large amounts of cash she was instructed to smuggle back by air from Angola to Holland during the 1990s.

Niels Holst is close to the Chinese Trayton Group. He was a founding trustee in 1995 of Trayton Holdings, the tax haven-registered holding company. In 2006 he was appointed a non-executive director of the Trayton Group in China.

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Bodil Ross Sørensen

Head of Tvind’s schools and described as Amdi Petersen’s second in command, said to operate much like a ‘political commissar’.

Closely involved in Teachers Group’s financial affairs. Chairman of the Humanitarian Foundation from 1987 to 1993, when Danish police believe she had a key role in making grants to bodies which turned out to be front organisations for the TG.

She was charged with fraud in 2002, but found not guilty in 2006. Police have not brought any new charges. Present whereabouts unknown

Further information on Bodil Ross Soerensen available on request

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Maria Darsbo

“Chairperson of the Federation for Associations connected to the International HUMANA People to People Movement”. Based in Zimbabwe.










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Jytte Nielsen

Very active over many years in Tvind clothes collection in Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, the UK, Austria, Sweden and Denmark.

She was a trustee of Humana UK and one of those dismissed by the UK Charity Commission following investigations into its financial affairs in 1996.








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Else Jensen

Described as a kind of Tvind ‘political commissar’ and key figure in ‘The Teachers Group Economy’. On the board of key offshore trusts and director of several companies. A founder director of Fairbank, Cooper and Lyle.

Jensen was one of eight TG members accused of money laundering in a failed prosecution in Belgium, 2002-4








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Birgitte Krohn

High ranking member of the Teachers Group inner circle, a key trustee of many offshore companies, private trusts and enterprises. Very frequently cited in Danish police investigations. A founder director of Fairbank, Cooper and Lyle.

Most recently she has played a key role in construction of the Teachers Group’s $10 million new headquarters and luxury retreat at TG Pacifico in Mexico. Krohn is also believed to be a director of Jersey-registered Fairbank, Cooper, Lyle (FCL), the offshore company that owns the Teachers Groups’s plantations.

Originally Birgitte Krohn was Amdi Petersen’s private cook, arranging his meals according to a special diet.

Krohn was one of eight Teachers Group leaders unsuccessfully charged with money laundering in Belgium in 2002.

Further information on Birgitte Krohn available on request

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Anne Nielsen

Senior Teachers Group member known to have been appointed to the boards of several offshore companies, private trusts and other enterprises.

Further information on Anne Nielsen available on request








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Marie Lichtenberg

A director of the CCTG college in California (2006), but possibly currently resident in South Africa.

She is the sister of Simon Lichtenberg, founder of the Trayton group of companies in China and rhe man most widely expected to be the next leader of the Teachers Group.








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Svend Sørensen

One of the original 100 founder signatories of the Teachers group in around 1970. Since then he has worked for Amdi Petersen all over the world.

Has been a board member of several key offshore accounts and private trusts, and founder director of Fairbank, Cooper and Lyle. Was a director of South China Sea Farming SB (Malaysia), a company Danish police alleged was associated with money laundering through a Malaysian sawmill.

Further information on Svend Sørensen available on request

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Eva Vestergaard

A trained lawyer, and senior Teachers Group financial manager who has ‘worked secretly with Amdi for years’ and is decribed as  ’hard core’.

She has been a board member of many key offshore companies and trusts, and is known to be appointed to two Teachers Group companies currently registered in the UK. She is thought likely to be living in Belize.

Vestergaard was originally among those charged with fraud by Danish police, but charges against her were dropped before the trial began in 2002.

Further information on Eva Vestergaard available on request

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Joseph (Joep) Nagel

Dutch-born Nagel was originally Amdi Petersen’s bodyguard, and has since been a board member, director, trustee or shareholder of a wide variety of key Teachers group offshore companies and trusts. A founder director of Fairbank, Cooper and Lyle.

Nagel was one of eight TG members accused of money laundering in a failed prosecution in Belgium, 2002

Further information on Joseph Nagel available on request

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Lena Jensen










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THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY

he left with a golden handshake

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Henning Bjornlund (Henry Henning)

Today a humble research fellow at the University of South Australia, Adelaide – but before 1989 Henning Bjornlund was a key financial director of the Teachers Group.

According to reports Bjornlund was the ‘financial mastermind’ principally responsible for turning the Tvind TEachers Group from a small alternative school into a multi-billion property empire with landholdings all over the world.

Bjornlund left the Teachers Group suddenly in 1989, reportedly with a large ‘golden handshake’ (perhaps to guarantee his silence).

If so, it has worked. Bjornlund’s university CV unaccountably fails to mention his 15 years with Tvind. His presence at the University has upset many other academics, who have asked the vice chancellor, Denise Bradley, to look into it – but so far without success.

Danish police say they ‘would like to talk to’ Bjornlund if he returns to Denmark.

Further information on Henning Bjornlund available on request

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TIMBER TRADERS, FARMERS

and other businessmen

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Simon Lichtenberg

Regarded as the ‘crown prince’ most likely to take over as leader of the Teachers Group in future.

In China since the early 1990s, Lichtenberg runs a group of companies based in Shanghai known as the Trayton Group, which manufactures and sells furniture around the world. The Trayton Group is widely regarded as being closely linked to the Teachers Group.

Lichtenberg grew up in the Teachers Group. His parents joined the TG when he was just seven years old, and he was brought up in a private Tvind school. A sister, Marie, is also a leading Teachers group member.

More information on the Trayton Group

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Jonas Israel

American-born Jonas Israel runs a well established logging company in Borneo called McCorry and Co, with branches in the USA

Logging is a core business activity for the Teachers Group and the company fits in with the pattern of timber trading. In fact Israel has long been a senior Teachers Group operator. He was a director of several companies in Malaysia investigated by Danish police, and has been associated with a large number of the Teachers Group’s international portfolio of offshore companies and private trusts.

Further information on Jonas Israel is available on request

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Soren Sorensen

Known as ‘The Farmer’, this senior Teachers Group member manages much TG agribusiness in Central and South America.

He is currently believed to be responsible for the Fazenda Jatoba timber and fruit plantation in Brazil, and is also on the board of the new Teachers Group ‘headquarters building’, TG Pacifico, in San Juan de las Pulgas, Mexico. Previously, until around 2003, he was manager of the Teachers Group banana plantations in Belize and Ecuador.

Further information on Soren Sorensen is available on request

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Flemming Gustafsson

Currently thought to be in Zimbabwe, where he is in charge of several large eucalyptus plantations – but Flemming Gustasson has a colourful past with the Teachers Group.

In early 2008, Gustafsson and fellow TG member Birgit Dinesen-Jensen were on the run from the Russian FSB, after their Siberian logging company collapsed amid allegations of fraud.

Previously, up to 2000, Gustafsson was a key director of EC Trading, an Amsterdam clothes trading company that went bust in very grubby circumstances. In 2002-4, Gustafsson was one of eight TG members accused of money laundering in Belgium. The prosecution failed for ‘lack of evidence’.

See Hot Money: the European clothes laundry

Further information on Flemming Gustafsson is available on request

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Kim Bonde Andersen

A key member of ‘The Teachers Group Economy’, associated with various dodgy enterprises – notably the supposed sawmill company in Malaysia investigated by police.

Andersen was most recently in charge of the failed Siberian logging venture, Taiga Industries, that closed in 2008 following allegations of fraud and a complaint to the Russian FSB.

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Sune Jørgensen

Curator of ‘Friends Forever’ and leader of Tvind’s Kunstforening (Tvinds Arts Association)








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last revised 7th April 2009

Why?

Do you have additional information or a photograph
of any of these people? Please tell us.

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MISSING! Five on the run from police.
Amdi Petersen	Kirsten Larsen	Marlene Gunst
Kirsten Fuglsbjerg (Christie Pipps)	Sten Byrner
GOING TO JAIL Prosecuted for fraud
	Poul Joergensen
FIVE IN THE USA Signatories of various companies and not-for-profits
Mikael Norling	Ester Neltrup	“Lynn Sailsbury” (Soerensen)
Anne Hansen	Michael Hermann
MORE FINANCIAL WIZARDS The mystery men and women behind the financial empire
Ruth Sejeroe-Olsen	Niels Peter Holst	Bodil Ross Sørensen
Maria Darsbo	Jytte Nielsen	Else Jensen
Birgitte Krohn	Anne Nielsen	Marie Lichtenberg
Svend Sørensen	Eva Vestergaard	Joseph Nagel
Lena Jensen	and the one that got away….	Henning Bjornlund (Henry Henning)
TIMBER TRADERS, FARMERS and other businessmen
Simon Lichtenberg	Jonas Israel	Soren Sorensen ‘The Farmer’
Flemming Gustafsson	Kim Bonde Andersen	Sune Jørgensen

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Last revised 22nd May 2009