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First in a series of articles in Vårt Land about UFF Norway and the Teachers Group. Other articles.
From Vårt Land
Saturday 23rd October 2010
By Bjørn Olav Nordahl and Turid Sylte
DRESS CODE
UFF collected used clothing worth more than 30 million Norwegian kroner [$5m] last year. Only ten [$1.7m] of these millions were earmarked for development assistance. They were then sent to Switzerland. Is it possible to crack the UFF dress code?
The white Mercedes van has passed Oppdal on the E6 road to Trondheim. The road is slippery and it’s dark. The date is 14th February this year and approaching midnight. Inside the car are two students at Den Reisende Høgskole (DRH, The Travelling Folk High School) at Hornsjø near Lillehammer. The driver is 29-year-old Valentina Danailova from Bulgaria. She has driven herself hard all the last week, spent most of her time on the road, behind the wheel of the 15 year old van. With her is Milan Konkol, a 20 year old Czech man. The vehicle they are in is a white Mercedes Sprinter with green number plates. It has significant corrosion, the load is not secured and the car has bad rear brakes.
On the E6 coming south from Trondheim is a Volvo truck, travelling at 73 kilometres per hour. One hundred and sixty metres before the 60-zone south of Ulsberg in Rennebu the driver slows to 65 kilometres per hour. Then he brakes suddenly. But it’s no use.
At 22.30 the police get a call from the man who drove the truck. He says the white van came over into his lane. The passenger side of the van hit the front of the truck. It is serious for Milan Konkol. He is declared dead the same evening. The driver, Valentina Danailova, is flown to the St. Olav Hospital in Trondheim by air ambulance. She is seriously injured, but is out of the hospital a few months later. The damaged van is towed away for technical investigation. It turns out it is full of used clothing. On the white bonnet is the logo “Humana People to People.” The sticker is almost unscathed.
Premium Municipalities
Seven months later, on 23rd September, 2010, 20 mayors, deputy mayors and leaders of municipal waste management companies are in a white tent at the Jernbanetorget (Rail Market) in Oslo. They are invited by UFF (U-landshjelp fra Folk til Folk) to a prize-giving on Humana People-to-People day. Humana is UFF’s sister organisation. Twenty eight municipalities are nominated for four prizes. UFF will give awards to the municipalities that collect the most clothing.
UFF has a cooperation agreement with 170 of Norway’s 430 municipalities. They are important partners because they allow UFF to put their bright green containers on the municipality’s recycling points and inform residents about the scheme. Municipalities cooperate with UFF in the belief that they contribute to aid in the Third World.
At the end of the tent is a Danish man, Jesper Pedersen, for many years the manager of UFF Norway. With coffee cup in hand and big posters in background, he says their values are “solidary humanism” and the idea is “to gather used clothing and shoes for the benefit of people in the south.” Posters around the tent declare slogans such as “Re-use creates development” and “Re-use of clothes makes sense.”
Before the award ceremony and lunch at 2 o’clock, the locals tour the UFF store “Underground”, in Main Street, a stone’s throw away. Mayor in Hareid Municipality, Hans Gisle Holstad, praises UFF and says he is impressed by the work they perform. “It’s great that the clothes we do not want, you can get someone to benefit who needs it in other countries,” he says. Others are not so sure, but they turn up because they have been promised a prize. “I did not know there was a competition, before we had this invitation,” said Christel Meyer, vice-mayor of Hamar. The deputy mayor of Ski has been told in advance that the municipality will win first prize. “We are also nominated for the top ten in Europe,” she says.
Comeback containers.
Just over 17 years ago it was a different tune, at least in Oslo. On 14th May 1993 the City Council decided to terminate all agreements with UFF for collection containers on municipal ground. It happened after many years of critical discussion of the Tvind movement and their work, that UFF has ties to, and Den Reisende Høgskole (the Travelling Folk High School) at Hornsjø. Defectors started the National Association against Tvind, and in January 1993 delivered a report to the City of Oslo. This led the City government to stop cooperation with UFF. We shall return to Tvind, a movement which has received a storm of criticism. But for now let’s just say that the Oslo municipality and UFF have found each other again.
In 2009 the municipality of Oslo divided places for clothing containers on their ground equally between UFF and Fretex, so that the two competitors have 61 containers each. But it is not only in Oslo that UFF is booming. The organisation now has 1,400 containers placed in Norway. More to come. “We’ll probably be able to double the number,” smiles Jesper Pedersen, with a strong Danish accent. “Now it’s awesome. Many municipalities are supporting us,” says his wife, Rosa Marielle Fried. She is a spokesperson for UFF Norway and smiles inside the worn, blue anorak from the 70′s she is wearing.
In the county of Vestfold UFF has taken over all the public locations for clothing containers in the nine municipalities that cooperate on waste through a company called Vesar. The reason is that according to Vesar, UFF does not ask for payment to collect the clothes, while Fretex [Salvation Army second hand in Norway] charges 300,000 kroner for the job. It emerged that Vesar then went out with a price request in spring 2009. There were 26 Fretex containers in the municipality of which UFF had 13. Now UFF has all 39, with the possibility of more.
Facing the audience in the tent, the UFF CEO emphasises that UFF is working continuously to get the most help for developing countries out of the organised clothing collection. He talks about low cost and routines. While Jesper Pedersen and Rosa Marielle Fried are addressing the municipalities, two tall, tanned men are standing in the background. Gert Olsen is the director of the Den Reisende Høgskole (The Travelling High School). Øyvind Wiström is a teacher at Vestfold University College. Both have been in UFF Norway since the late 70′s, and the now-graying gentlemen have had countless positions in the system. Wiström observes the press with a watchful eye.
“You always twist things. Now you must stop putting everything together. No, there is no connection to Tvind. These are different businesses. When will you get that point?” Wiström turns away. “No, no picture,” he says.
Tough landing in transit
She does not know that the police are waiting for her. Marlene Gunst is sitting on the flight from Mexico City to London. The fair-haired Danish woman with the light freckled face and eyes often hidden behind sunglasses, can for the time being enjoy the in-flight service, before swooping down to one of the world’s busiest airports. But at Heathrow the long-time financial manager in the Tvind system is stopped in transit control. Danish police have received tips from colleagues in Mexico about flight numbers and times. They know that Gunst will be in transit in London. The Danes contact English authorities. British police wave the Danish woman aside. She must wait, for a fax from Denmark. Marlene Gunst is clearly feeling uncomfortable. She has served in management for the worldwide Tvind network of schools and aid organizations, an environment that is also inextricably linked to Norway.
On 26th December 2009 the Danish newspapers go crazy, “Tvind leader arrested in London” and “The hunt is on!” Why so much fuss about a 50 year old Danish woman? And is there a connection to Norway? Let us go back a little in what has been a rather long story. First stop is in Grindsted, Denmark.
Tvind peaks
The small, sleepy Danish town has a dairy and potato sorting center, and a bakery in Vestergade. On the last Wednesday of April, 2001, the rural idyll is broken. At nine o’clock in the morning, a long line of marked and unmarked police cars blaze in. Fifty police officers have been asked to take part in the operation. Investigators have secured court orders to seize bank deposits, hard drives and documents. The force strikes at eight different addresses, white cars shuttle to and fro all day. When evening comes, the police have confiscated 70 computers and several cubic meters of documents, one person has been arrested and a warrant issued for another. This is not about drugs or alcohol smuggling. Instead it is about tax evasion, embezzlement and abuse of power in the school cooperation Tvind. The raid in Denmark is so far the culmination in a seven-year battle to get to the bottom of the Tvind system’s shady finances. After the 2001 police action, Tvind becomes a running story in the Danish media. Danish police will later serve charges against eight key people in a worldwide network, which has from the first been ruled by Mogens Amdi Petersen.
The short version is this: in 1965 Petersen is ousted from his job [as a teacher] at a primary school in Odense [Denmark] because of his long hair and complaints about his behaviour. After starting Denmark’s first hippie collective, he sets out on a long journey around the world. Home again, he has the idea of starting an alternative school system, one where students share the suffering of the world’s poor through direct experience: a “travelling college”. Amdi Petersen’s vision is revolutionary – to those close to him he declares that the civil society must be fought against, by using the bourgeois society – by robbing society’s money. Amdi Petersen’s charisma, persuasive appearance and new pedagogic ideas have an impact in Denmark; with the help of state grants, the ‘Travelling Schools’ and Tvind grow rapidly. It revolutionises the Danish school system. In 1975, Amdi and his colleagues buy a farm called Tvind, which means stream or ‘twofold’. Later Amdi Petersen establishes the Teachers Group. In the 1990s there are about 300 Teachers Group members. Most of these are in different positions around the world, in companies or organizations affiliated to Tvind. And they support Amdi Petersen’s thoughts and ideas by joining a community where they commit to follow three Cs: Common money, Common time and Common distribution.
The Teachers Group is the key
The spark that drove the Danish police to investigate Tvind was a Danish TV2 documentary broadcast in September 2000. In it, defectors from the Teachers Group described their experiences. The Teachers Group also has Norwegian members, and one of them was Carl Petter Nilsen. He was head of the clothes collection and sorting business in London. After 15 years, he resigned in 1996, but stayed in contact with the organisation until 2003.
“What irritated me more than anything, was the secrecy, the feeling that there was something they wouldn’t tell you,” Nilsson says when he meets Vårt Land over a cup of coffee and cookies.
In 2001, [the Danish newspaper] Jyllands-Posten revealed that Amdi Petersen was living in a luxury apartment on Fisher Island off Miami. It had been purchased for around 35 million kroner [$6m].
“I felt in a way betrayed then. I had worked hard and done my best,” Nilsen says. Like others in the Teachers Group he had to sign that he would follow the three Cs. “It means the community has control over your money and decides what to do,” said Nilsen. He calculates he contributed somewhere between three and four million kroner [$510,000-$680,000] to the Group’s common fund.
‘Cash Laundering Machine’
Dane Hans la Cour had already defected from the Teachers Group in 1990 and was one of the most important police witnesses. He died of illness last year. In the Danish TV2 documentary of 2000 he described the Tvind system as a “cash laundering machine”.
An important part of this was the Tvind Humanitarian Fund. It was founded in 1982 under the name “Fund for general purposes, etc.” There was no longer any use in putting money into a common ‘yellow bucket’ as the Teachers Group did in the beginning. In 1987 [the Danish] parliament passed a law tightening [charity] tax exemption so that it applied only to funds defined as having “a humanitarian purpose, promotion of research or the protection of the environment”. At a meeting shortly afterwards, the leader Mogens Amdi Petersen, came up with one of his “revelations,” Hans la Cour told the TV programme. The Teachers Group would close down the old fund and start a new one. It would be called “The Fund for Humanitarian Purposes, Promotion of Research and the Protection of the Environment” – an exact copy of the wording in the text.
“We lay down and laughed, the proposal was so good,” la Cour said.
Money from the fund would go to various projects. One of them was ‘Global Research’, in which la Cour was involved. However, according to la Cour, this was pure camouflage and a tax dodge. None of the projects were real. La Cour and some employees travelled in a ship and met local people in poor countries. They wrote down names and wrote an application for money from the fund on behalf of those they met. After that the “applicants” heard nothing.
La Cour also explained to police that several posts in the annual accounts were only cloaks of secrecy. TV equipment was listed as a cost, but had already been bought by the Teacher Group – it was not a real expense. Rent for the ship was just money that went from the Teacher Group back to the Teachers Group, he explained.
The Danish journalist and author Frede Farmand drove the journalistic investigation behind the TV2 documentary. He stresses that Tvind and UFF is about “corporate emptying,” and that the key to understanding the economic system is the Teachers Group.
“If you have UFF and Humana involved in a country, you can be sure that the people appointed to run both sides, both donor and recipient, are Teachers Group members,” Farmand said.
Farmand said that since the Teachers Group constantly closes companies and start new ones, and operates a large number of companies around the world, no one has a complete overview of how much really goes to foreign aid. His estimate is that the share is two to three percent.
‘The church, perhaps?’
On Tuesday of last week, Tomas Tuoma (25) is in the House of Second Hand in Pilestredet in Oslo, trying on a 1970s-style brown velvet jacket. The store is a second-hand clothes shop run by UFF. But when we ask Tomas if he knows who is behind the store, he replies: “It’s not the church, then? It usually is.”
Journalist Frede Farmand thinks it is vital that the public, who believe they are giving clothes to a good cause, get to know what they actually are supporting. Additionally, UFF and Humana in several countries receive aid money from the state. But Farmand considers the worst thing is the way people in the movement are treated.
“There is a large amount of abuse of people in this system, it grossly manipulates people and exploits them economically. It is scandalous.”
He stresses: “You can be sure that the way UFF operates in one country, they also do in other countries. This is an economic system.”
Dane Steen Thomsen defected from the movement in 1998. In a report to the Danish Ministry of Education, he said there was no easy way for someone who had been a member for a while to get out of the Teachers Group. Everybody has to sign documents and papers – even if they don’t know what’s in them. Several times he himself signed blank sheets of paper. The Group’s justification was that he would not have to worry about “stupid things” like houses and property. But when he decided to leave, he began to get scared. What papers did Tvind have that they could now use against him?
But it’s not just Dane Steen Thomsen who has their signature on important documents. There are some interesting tracks in Norway, too.
The decision is Lillehammer
In 1978, Den Reisende Høgskole (The Travelling High School) first saw the light of day. Actually, the name was originally Den Reisende Folkehøgskole (The Travelling Folk High School), but the name had to be changed. In 1983, the the Norwegian State Educational Loan Fund (Lånekassen) and the [education?] ministry refused to approve the school as a ‘folk school’ [independent college eligible for government support] and ruled that the students would have to finance the school themselves. That same year the founders bought the Hornsjø Mountain Hotel and another school, near Lillehammer. Since then, both Ulandshjelp fra Folk til Folk (UFF) and Den Reisende Høgskole (The Travelling High School) have entered the Norwegian consciousness, with their collections of clothing and money. The school, whose students wander the streets selling postcards with pictures of children who need development assistance. UFF in the form of containers that accept used clothing. But what really hides behind postcards and containers?
Vårt Land has found the incorporation documents from the time the first branches of Tvind arrived in Norway. In addition, the newspaper has gone through a number of public documents relating to one particular institution: Stiftelsen Felleseie (The Foundation for the Common Good). It is in practice, the same people involved in this foundation who are behind the Travellers College at Hornsjø. The foundation also owns the premises where the school is located. The 30-year-old documents show particularly one thing. The Tvind finance manager, Marlene Gunst, is not just a remote figure in Mexico or at Heathrow, she has close ties to Norway.
On 30th December 1987, new laws for the Foundation were jointly adopted at an extraordinary general meeting. One of the signatories to the protocol was Marlene Gunst. The other signatures belong to people that over the years have walked back and forth between the trinity that constitutes the Norwegian branches of Tvind: UFF, Den Reisende Høgskole (the Travelling High School), and Stiftelsen Felleseie. But the Tvind financial manager who was eventually to become so notorious pops up not only in Lillehammer in 1987. Almost ten years later, on 13th March 1996, a mortgage bond with a nominal value of NOK 3,750,000 is registered with a magistrate in South Gudbrandsdal. Lender: ”The Selvejede Institution Fælleseje” in Ulfsborg in Denmark, the Danish headquarters of the Tvind movement. The borrower: “Stiftelsen Felleseie i Norge” – the common foundation in Norway. The person who signs on behalf of the borrower is Marlene Gunst, who also sits on the board of the Norwegian Foundation. On both sides, that is. She signs along with Øyvind Wiström, one of the driving forces behind the creation of UFF Norway and later principal of Den Reisende Høyskole (The Travelling High School). Yes, precisely, one of the two tanned men hovering in the background of Jernbanetorget in Oslo during the action day in September. UFF’s management in Norway has, like Wiström, over many years tried to deny that there is a link between the UFF, Den Reisende Høyskole college and the much-discussed Tvind system investigated by police.
Vart Land has obtained documents that show the links between the various institutions. The same people keep coming back as signatories, managers and board members. And money sloshes around the system. This flow of money is worth attention.
Old dream
Back on the Jernbarnetorget in Oslo, Øyvind Wiström is still angry that a link is being made between Tvind, Den Reisende Høgskole and UFF Norway. And he does not like to talk about Marlene Gunst. “You journalists lie about everything, you always get it wrong,” he says again.
“What about Marlene Gunst?”
“Marlene Gunst?”
“Yes, Marlene Gunst. We know that she has been absolutely central to the business in Lillehammer?”
“Hmm. OK. She is certainly a friend of ours.”
“Can we take a picture of you?”
“Absolutely not, I’m here as a private person. This is something I do in my spare time.”
In front of Wiström, people are hurrying homewards in the sharp afternoon sun. Many of them take a copy of the brochure offered by students from Den Reisende Høgskole in Hornsjø. The brochure describes the work of UFF. It shows pictures of happy children receiving assistance and education. In China, Guinea Bissau, India. On the back of the brochure is printed a large logo: Innsamlingskontrollen. [An official body that regulates charities in Norway.] UFF presents a number of figures. It says that Innsamlingskontrollen, an industry body for NGOs, has calculated UFF’s achievement rating as 99.5 percent. UFF also publicises [the rule] that every charity approved by Innsamlingskontrollen must give at least 65 percent of funds raised directly to the intended [charitable] purpose.
Let’s take a look at the numbers. Is it possible to send 99.5 percent of [charitable] funds raised directly to development projects without some loss along the way?
Two faces
The accounts UFF Norway has submitted to Innsamlingskontrollen indicate that the organisation allocated 12.2 million kroner [$2m] to development aid in 2009. At the same time the organisation’s extremely low overheads are listed as only half a million kroner [$85,000] in the accounts. In other words, very good.
But other accounts show a quite different picture. We will now make a small attempt to follow the flow of money in the UFF system. It is a demanding exercise.
UFF is actually split in two, Foreningen UFF Norge (Association UFF Norway) and Foreningen UFF Butikkene i Norge (Association UFF Shops in Norway). The organizational form Foreningen (“association”) means UFF has limited financial liability and only has a limited obligation to submit accounts and is not required to be as transparent. Accounts for 2009 show UFF Shops had revenues of 30.5 million kronen. The main revenues stem from collection and sales of used clothing. But when we look at spending [by UFF Shops], the picture is completely different from that in the other association, UFF Norway. Expenditure by UFF Shops shows that the association spent almost 18 million krone to acquire 30.5 million krone. That means that 59 percent of the revenue disappears on the road to becoming development assistance. When the UFF Shops drew up its accounts, it sent nearly 12 million krone to the other association, UFF Norway, as a gift. And since it is UFF Norway that reports to Innsamlingskontrollen, the result looks excellent. This association has almost no expenses.
2009 is not a special year. Accounts for UFF Shops for the past five years show the same picture. In 2008, revenue: 24.7 million, spending: 15.1 million. In other words, only 39 per cent of funds raised went to foreign aid. In 2007, the figure was 37 per cent, in 2006 it was as low as 35 percent and in 2005 scraped the bottom with only 30 percent.
Representative?
The question is whether the audience at the Jernbanetorget in Oslo are given a true picture of the economy in the UFF system, when students from Den Reisende Høgskole hand out the brochure stamped with the Innsamlingskontrollen logo. An achievement of 99.5 per cent looks like an excellent figure.
Let’s examine the numbers a bit more. For what is really the basis of that calculation of 99.5 percent? Revenue collected from the clothes, perhaps? Sorry. UFF’s largest source of income, clothes, has nothing to do with the sums at all. Instead, the funds it collects come in the form of hard cash. It is not a large sum, only a small drop in the UFF accounts. In 2009 UFF collected 256,236 krone from donation tins and from sponsors. And as UFF sends all this money directly to foreign aid, it is not so difficult to calculate the numbers quite accurately – in this case, it leads to an ‘achievement’ of nearly 100 per cent. But for the sake of clarity: 256,000 million krone accounted for just 0.85 percent of UFF sales in the shops in last year.
Many small streams
The money in UFF shops go two ways. One way is the budget inaccurately called “expenses”. The second stream is the 11.8 million krone [$2m] that in 2009 were transferred from stores to UFF Norway. Let us take the first stream to begin with.
When the two East European students at Den Reisende Høgskole (DRH) embarked on their ill-fated journey in the rusty, 15-year-old van in February this year, it was because of a signed business agreement between the DRH college and UFF Shops. This agreement means that students at Hornsjø are responsible for emptying all the UFF containers from the lake and north, a total of 450 containers. Although it is described as voluntary, in reality Valentina Danilova and Milan Konkol were working for UFF Shops. Accordingly, in 2009 UFF Shops paid 5.7 million krone [$975,000] to the Hornsjø school for the collections. But the money leaking out from UFF does not stop there. As we said, Den Reisende Høgskole is located in premises owned by the Stiftelsen Felleseie. So the college must pay rent. Every month DRH pays 120,000 krone [$20,000] to the Stiftelsen Felleseie, where Marlene Gunst has held a central position. In addition, teachers at Den Reisende Høgskole are members of the Teachers Group. The school’s chairman Gert Olsen refuses to say how much salary they pay into a common account every month.
The accounts for Felleseie show that they have maintained a balance of roughly zero for the past five years, while outgoings for the same period have stood at around five million kroner.
Let us turn back to the other cash flow, the nearly 12 million kroner that in 2009 went from the Association UFF Shops to the Association UFF Norway. In many applications that UFF has sent to Norad [The official Norwegian state foreign aid association] it makes it explicit that UFF Norway is a member of an umbrella organisation called The Federation for Associations Connected To The International Humana People To People Movement (FAIHPP). To belong, UFF Norway pays a membership fee of 6.5 percent of collected funds. FAIHPP is located in Switzerland and is registered in trade register in Geneva. UFFs spokesperson, Rosa Fried, confirms that in 2009 UFF Norway paid nearly 695,000 kroner [$119,000] in membership fees to FAIHPP. This organization has 36 member associations around the world.
“Through FAIHPP we have access to a wide range of services, advice and guidance on development and implementation of new and existing projects, “says Fried.
But it’s not just the membership fee that goes directly to Switzerland. In 2009 UFF Norway transferred most project funding to Geneva. In all, about 10.7 million kroner [$1.8m].
“When the member organizations in Europe often support the same projects, there are advantages in transferring the project funds collected from Europe through FAIHPP”, says Fried.
She argues that an auditor in Switzerland confirms that the annual funds are transferred in accordance with instructions from UFF Norway.
The big defeat
After the police raid on Grindsted and the disclosure of Mogens Amdi Petersen’s 35 million kroner [$6m] apartment in Miami in 2001, the Tvind story began to move fast. In January 2002 the Tvind leader was stopped by police during a stopover in Los Angeles. Amdi, as he is called in the Teachers Group, was in custody in the USA until he was extradited to Denmark in the autumn of 2002. In November 2002, Amdi and seven others in the Tvind inner circle were put on trial [in Denmark] – including Marlene Gunst, the lady with close ties to activities in Lillehammer.
Vårt Land has gone through the police report and court documents in connection with the Tvind case Denmark. The documents paint a picture of an ingenious system of company structures and bank accounts in large parts of the world, for example, in Miami, Malaysia, Tahiti, Jersey, Paris and Switzerland. Police believe the accused were guilty of embezzlement of 56 million kroner and tax fraud of 52 million kroner. They called for prison terms of between two and five years. Among those obliged to appear in court was Marlene Gunst. She was described as finance manager of the Tvind system. Police believed she should get three years. The main defendant, Mogens Amdi Petersen should receive a prison term of five years, police said.
Four years and 170 hearings after the opening of the trial, the first verdict was announced by the City Court in Ringkøbing. On 31st August 2006 Sten Byrne, who was a kind of finance director for the group up to December 1992, was sentenced to a one year suspended sentence. He was thus a free man after the verdict. The City Court did not agree with the prosecution’s claim that the eight jointly built a cover operation to claim tax refunds from the Danish authorities, and then spent the money as they wished. Sten Byrner admitted transferring 35 million kroner [$6m] from the “Fund for Humanitarian Purposes, Promotion of Research and the Protection of the Environment” as “payments for la uxury apartment on Fisher Island, a transfer contrary to the Statute of the Fund.” The court chose to believe that it was Byrner alone who acted without the permission of the Teachers Group, not that they all understood together that the money for the apartment would be taken from the Fund.
The verdict was a huge defeat for the police. The prosecution appealed, but before it could be served on the defendants, all except for Poul Jørgensen fled the country. Jørgensen had been Group spokesperson for several years and had taken over responsibility for finances following the ‘injustice’ against Sten Byrner. Jørgensen would now have to appear at a higher court.
Empty projects
So the court decided to press charges against Jørgensen himself, and postpone the cases against the seven others until they came back to Denmark. On 20th January 2009, Jørgensen was sentenced for aggravated tax fraud and embezzlement of money from Tvinds humanitarian fund, or contributing to this. The Vestre Landsret court drew the opposite conclusion from the City Court:
“Vestre Landsret rejects the explanation, that the disposition of funds on unfair terms purpose was a ‘special arrangement’ on Sten Byrner’s side, which took place without the knowledge of others in the Teachers Group.”
Vestre Landsret court emphasised that that what led to Jørgensens conviction, was the fact that he was part of a system made by the group. This would probably also have great weight in the cases against the other seven. The court noted that a group of people in the Teachers Group shared ‘a common understanding’ that they channelled funds from the Fund for projects which in reality were empty shells. So money was not used for the correct [charitable] purpose, and thus the Fund had no right to tax exemption.
One of the projects the police were interested in involved the Norwegian-registered company One World Channel, of which UFF’s Norway’s founder, Øyvind Wiström, was the general manager. On paper, the project applied for nine million Danish kroner [$1.5m] from the Tvind Fund. Wiström gave an explanation to police in the case. He said he did not create the budgets, the research hypotheses or the project applications, although the application bore his name. Vestre Landsret court pointed out that the Tvind inner circle deliberately created a system that was difficult to penetrate for Danish authorities partly because the money went through a trust in France, and by the widespread use of companies outside the Danish government’s sphere of influence.
Sten Byrner, Marlene Gunst, Amdi and the others are still wanted by the police. Danish authorities have been searching for them since 2006 in order to make them appear in front of a higher court. Only in one case, have the police got a glimpse of Tvind’s central leadership. It was when Marlene Gunst was stopped in London. And the clearly shaken chief finance officer had to sit at Heathrow and wait for the fax from Danish prosecutors to arrive and be read aloud. It said she had to attend the Court of Appeal in the country. After the indictment was served, the Tvind chief financial officer was eventually allowed leave London. No one has seen her since. But District Attorney Kirsten Dyrmark contacted Danish newspapers and told them the hunt for the other defendants would now be intensified.
“We are in contact with Mexican authorities, “she said.
Yes, what is this about Mexico ?
Desert Palace
The American journalist Michael Waterman remembers his grandfather. He is planning fishing trips along the coast of Mexico, just south of the border with California. He thinks of camping, shimmering sunsets in the desert. Waterman goes back to San Juan de Las Pulgas. He takes his wife, children and fishing rods in a SUV and shows them what a great place it was in his childhood kingdom.
“Sorry. You have no right to enter.”
The guard is polite but firm. The road down to the coast is completely closed. In the background, Waterman and his family can glimpse a huge complex of buildings reaching to the Mexican horizon. It is spring 2005.
“But we are just passing through, we won’t stop.”
Waterman manages to persuade the warden to let him take a drive through the area. But when they try to find the old house of family friend senor Morales, his jaw drops again. The house has disappeared, replaced by a luxury villa. Waterman peers through the window. The rooms are filled with top-of-the-range computers.
“Buenos Noches!”
Waterman’s friendly greeting is not reciprocated. Instead he gets an unequivocal message from a voice with a clear Danish accent: “Get out”.
Waterman tells the San Diego Reader newspaper of how in September 2009 he returned to Las Pulgas. This time he took a trip up to the main gate. Surveillance cameras and an electric gate. Mexican guards with binoculars and suspicious glances. He tries to talk to the guard, offers him a beer, is friendly. So the gatekeeper makes a call on his mobile phone. The message is simple.
“Get rid of the snoop!”
Waterman has found the Teachers Group’s new headquarters in Mexico.
Going to Mexico
Why has the Teachers Group settled in Mexico? Why has it built a palace costing ten million dollars, with swimming pool, squash court, cupolas, pergolas and the cathedral-like lines? Everything has been created on the drawing board by the famous architect Jan Utzon, who has also added apartment complexes, marble seats and terraces overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
“Denmark has no extradition treaty with Mexico,” said Tvind expert Frede Farmand laconically.
“It is a kind of conference center. In many ways you can call it the Teachers Group’s new home,” said Gert Olsen, general manager at Den Reisende Høgskole in Norway.
Mexico is certainly a long way from Hornsjø and the 40-50 students each year who come to Norway to go to the school that Olsen manages. This year, none of the students are Norwegian students, but DRH recruits many in Eastern Europe. The school is an opportunity for them to get away from poor conditions in their homeland. Many students are surprised at what they find:
“At DRH we all lived under slave-like conditions, and there were unreasonable deadlines for raising money for accommodation and school fees,”said Greek Ethan Tiliakos. He is one of those who got into trouble with the school administration because of the critical questions he asked about what he describes as a destructive and unhealthy culture. Finally he decided to leave school. His criticism is supported in a Norad report which evaluates the business: “The school operates on simple ‘carrot and stick’ principles. This makes it hard work most of the day.”
When students sign the application papers for DRH, they undertake to commit to raising 73,000 euros in six months to finance the school operation. In practice this means many long trips in the school vans.
“The school is run privately, without government support. Employees, like participants, are informed that the school is run this way and that all contribute to the voluntary work. There is no pressure, but it is based on voluntary efforts. The conditions Tiliakos describes are unknown to me,” says DRH general manager Gert Olsen.
Ethan Tiliakos was informal leader of the team that Valentina and Milan belonged to, with responsibility for emptying the UFF containers.
“Valentina was clearly overworked and tired, and I wanted her to avoid driving a few days. But we had to do our weekly emptying, and she was the only one available,” said Tiliakos.
“Unknown to me,” reiterates Olsen.
Brothers in arms
Olsen is standing in the autumn sun, together with his old friend and “brother in arms” Øyvind Wistrõm. Watching the students at DRH running around. Wiström had already joined Tvind by the middle of the 70s, but is tight-lipped when it comes to the controversial movement.
“Am I part of this Tvind movement? Yes and no. I do this as a private person.”
“How do you see the lawsuits in Denmark?”
“I regard it as exaggerated. You can dig into many organisations and find a lot of crap.”
“And your relationship with Mogens Amdi Petersen?”
“I knew him in his time. An extremely talented and charismatic leader who had some ideas that I agree with entirely.”
“What about the claims that were filed against him during the trial?”
“I’m not interested in old stuff.”
Gert Olsen is also not very interested. In talking. Especially not about the Teacher Group, where he himself is a member.
“The Teachers Group is something private. What we do with our money is also a private matter.”
“Is it long since you saw Mogens Amdi Petersen?”
“I have not seen him since before the trial.”
“How does it feel that he was found in a luxury apartment in Florida, paid for with Tvind money?”
“I do not think I should comment on it. There’s a limit.”
“It must be strange to see that, in practice, someone can break so sharply with his professed ideals?”
“That we will leave for another day.”
“What about the luxury complex in Mexico?”
“It’s not as expensive as it looks.”
“But it costs a lot to build a complex with so many beautiful buildings and an Olympic-size swimming pool?”
“Is it Olympic-size? I didn’t think it was that big, I have swum in it myself.”
OUR ACCOUNTS ARE REPRESENTATIVE, SAYS UFF
UFFs spokesperson in Norway, Rosa Fried, believes UFFs numbers and financial statements show a representative picture of the business in Norway.
“To what extent do the accounts for the UFF Norway show a representative picture of the economy in the UFF as a whole?”
“UFF Norway’s financial statements show a representative picture of the association’s work. The UFF Shop association accounts show a representative picture of the association’s work.”
“Accounts for the UFF Shops for 2009 show an income of 30.5 million kroner. At the same time 19.8 million kroner disappeared in expenses. What do you say to that?”
“To use the word ‘disappear’ meaning ‘vanish’ in this context, highlights the journalist’s standpoint, that’s all. The ‘disappearing’ is not 19.8 million in expenses, but 19.8 million kroner has been used to secure an income of 30.5 million.”
‘Not relevant’
“In your own brochure you provide an actual per cent for 2009 of 99.5 percent. To what extent is this a correct picture of the overall situation in the UFF when we look at the accounts as a whole?
“As previously stated by Innsamlingskontrollen, you should not use ratios to compare the organisations, but compare the activity of the organisation from year to year. Innsamlingskontrollen comes up with guidelines for how to treat the collection and sale of garments, so a calculation of percentage purpose for the UFF Shops association in Norway does not have particular relevance.”
“How many of the employees of the UFF Norway / UFF Shops are members of the Teachers Group and how much of their income to pay these in there?”
“I guess this question has slipped in by mistake. We can, of course, as the employer, not give any information about our employees’ private affairs.”
“What kind of relationship do you and Jesper Pedersen have with Mogens Amdi Petersen?”
“I can not see that this question is relevant to UFF and what the organization does, when that person is neither employed by or has any position in UFF Norway or the UFF Shops association in Norway. This is confirmed by the auditor.”
Gert Olsen, managing director of Den Reisende Høgskole is puzzled by the criticism being directed at the school by former pupils. He is unaware that Valentina Danailova was exhausted when she was driving and there was a car accident on Rennebu.
“We are not aware that she was overworked and tired. Nor that any responsible former participant has said anything about this before or after the accident here at school. The car involved in the accident car was EU approved and it has never been stated that the accident was due to the car’s condition. No comment.”
“What about criticism that the school has a destructive environment?”
“I do not recognise these criticisms and comments. On the contrary, participants in the school enjoy a high degree of cooperation and support to each other. It is in the program’s nature.”
Øyvind Wiström, founder of UFF Norway and former President of DRH, does not want to elaborate on his role in th Tvinde system or the company One World Channel. When Vårt Land calls, he does remember being questioned by police.
“I have made a statement to police?”
“Yes, according to the documents we have, you have made a statement to the police in Denmark on this company in the Tvind system.”
“Oh yes, that stuff, yes. That’s a closed chapter. I do not want to comment on that, except to say you can stick to what appears in the police interrogation,” Oyvind Wiström told Vårt Land.
Fact box: Den Reisende Høyskole
Den Reisende Folkehøyskole (“The Travelling Folk High School) was established In 1978 at Hankø outside Fredrikstad, with Day Hareide as principal. He left the school a year later. The school moved to Halden and Øyvind Wiström took over as principal.
The school was a Norwegian edition of Den Rejsende Høgskole (“The Travelling College”) started in Denmark by Mogens Amdi Petersen in 1970. Students were to study the social conditions in developing countries and in Norway. An important part was a several-month bus trip to countries in the Third World. Later this was replaced with “solidarity work” in development projects.
After having been given [government] financial support for a trial period, the Kirkeog Ministry of Education ruled in 1983 that the school should not be approved as a ‘folk’ college [ie receive state funding]. The school name was changed to Den Reisende Høyskole. In 1983 Øyvind Wiström established the foundation Stiftelsen Felleseie jointly as a buyer of Hornsjø Lodge outside Lillehammer and the school moved there. The school today rents its premises from the Stiftelsen Felleseie foundation.
Last year the school had a turnover of 9.3 million kronen. In 2009 Stiftelsen Felleseie had a turnover of 5.6 million. Humana People to People is the school’s partner organisation.
Fact box: UFF Norway
What is now called U-Landshjelp Fra Folk Til Folk I Norge (Development Aid from People to People Norway) was founded in Norway on 6th November 1979 as an association. On its website UFF Norway says: “The association is working on secular humanitarian grounds. The organisation wants to fight poverty and distress in the world and to support development which people themselves can help to drive forward.”
The first UFF Shop in Norway opened in 1980 selling used clothing.
UFF Norway is a member of the international Humana People to People movement. This has 35 member organizations and operates in 42 countries, according to the annual report for 2009. The report says the Humana People to People has more than 8,300 employees and their work helps 11.5 million people. Planet Aid in the United States, UFF Denmark, Biståndsföreningen HUMANA Sweden and Planet Aid UK Ltd in the UK are some of the other members.
The UFF Shops Association in Norway had a turnover of 30.5 million kroner in 2009. The association UFF Norway receives grants from the UFF Shops association. It had a turnover in 2009 of 12.3 million kroner.
Journalist cooperation
Vårt Land’s work on this article was in cooperation with British journalist Michael Durham. He has investigated the business affairs of Humana People to People, the Teachers Group and the Tvind movement since 1999. Together with Danish journalists, he runs the Tvind Alert web site. Tvind Alert has a large network of people in many countries with experience of the Tvind system. Durham has collected large amounts of written information and has cooperated with journalists in many different countries. Michael Durham has worked for the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and Observer and went freelance in 1999. He is interested in working on abuse of aid in general and is building a network under the umbrella Aid Alert.
Do you have any information about Humana or the Teachers Group? Please tell us.
Last updated: 1st November 2010
