Humana People-to-People Alert in the US

Belize

Tvind assets: huge mango, banana and orange plantations.

One of the company's banana farms in Belize.jpg

A Tvind banana farm in Belize [Fairbank, Cooper, Lyle website]

CENTRAL AMERICA - TVIND'S HUGE BANANA PLANTATIONS IN BELIZE ARE AT RISK
AFTER THE TEACHERS GROUP DEFAULTS
ON A $2m PUBLIC LOAN.

HOW DID A TVIND FISH FARMING COMPANY RUN BY A MAN WITH A REPUTATION FOR A 'TRAIL OF BAD DEALS' GET $2m FROM PUBLIC FUNDS?

- BELIZE TV REPORTS

Belize, July 21st 2005 - Tvind's massive banana, mango and shrimp farms in Belize may have to be sold after the Teachers Group failed to pay the interest on a $2m public loan, according to Belize TV.

The move could spell the end for Tvind's highly exploitative Belize plantations, notorious even within Central America for the primitive working conditions, low wages, health hazards and lack of trade union rights endured by local employees.

Belize 5 TV station reports that seven Tvind companies in Belize have been put into receivership. The move suggests the Tvind organisation is about to lose control of one of the most profitable parts of its secret financial empire.

One Tvind company, Toledo Fish Farming Ltd, run by 'Danish businessman' Soeren Soerensen, has defaulted on the loan of public money made by the Belize Social Security Board last year, according to the TV station. Soerensen had put up other Tvind farms as collateral, including a massive 640-acre banana farm.

Toledo Fish Farming Ltd, is just one of numerous huge Tvind farming enterprises in Central America notorious for poor working conditions and bad labour relations.

Last year, Belize 5 TV asked how the shrimp farm came to be given the unexplained cheap loan, breaking normal financial regulations. It said the farm was run by Soeren Soerensen, 'a businessman from Denmark...known for his chronically bad labour relations and a trail of bad deals as long as the Southern Highway.

' How a man who most people would not loan five dollars to, could walk out...with two million in workers' money is a total mystery?'

Soerensen, known as 'The Farmer', is a senior Teachers Group member who runs the huge commercial mango and banana plantations for Tvind. The secret money-making estates are an 'unpublicised' part of Tvind, notorious for using virtual 'slave labour', with low pay, no health insurance and no trade union rights - just the opposite of the enlightened development Tvind claims to promote in its publicly-known 'charities'.

Read the 2004 Belize 5 TV coverage here and the latest 2005 Belize TV coverage here.

In 1983-88 Tvind bought thousands of acres of fruit plantations in Belize, according to reliable reports in Danish newspapers and the book, Psycho-Sekten. One, Monkey River Estate, is said to be America's biggest mango farm. These estates, bought for around £7m, are commercially farmed, with workers denied affiliation to any union and paid low wages. There are armed guards and visitors are not welcome. The head honcho here is named as Soren Hofdahl Sorenson.

Recent (May 2001) - Danish police investigate corruption, further accusations of exploitation of Belize workers, and Tvind faces Belize Banana Boycott

Tvind web site

Caribbean Farming Ltd. owns 11 farms and production units in Belize, with 3.500 ha cultivated with bananas, citrus and shrimp.The production of bananas is the cornerstone of FC&L's agro-industrial division in South and Central America. With 1.000 ha of bananas, the Caribbean Farming-group produces around 40 % of the country's bananas for export. The bananas are AAA-quality and are sold through the Banana Growers Association on a long-term contract to Fyffes.

The companies in Belize employ 1.500 people and are highly respected for their positive influence on the economic and social development in Toledo District in Southern Belize.

Download booklet - Caribbean Farming in Belize

From Frank Nordhausen's book on psycho-cults:

The Empire of the Clothes Collectors

The Humana-Tvind-Movement Plantations in the Caribbean

An extract from Psycho- Sekten. Die Praktiken der Seelenfänger

(Psycho-cults - how the soul-catchers work) by Frank Nordhausen and Liane von Billerbeck

You only come to Belmopan if you really have to. So this is the capital of Belize: a bus station, rattly snack bars and a few concrete buildings. Surrounded by jungle, the air is hot and a few people are sitting apathetically in the shade.
           George Sosa puts down the phone and smiles: "Unfortunately I can't reach the minister, he has very, very urgent appointments. Maybe you get lucky manana." George Sosa is the director of the "best" hotel in Belmopan. "You're looking for Mister Sorensen?" he asks "He's a good friend of mine as well."
            It's the 13th of March 1996. We came to Belmopan to get some information about a Danish guy called Soren Hofdahl Sorensen. Only two days ago we crossed the Rio Hondo which is the border between Mexico and Belize. We assume to find some wirepullers of a mysterious organisation: The Tvind-Humana-Movement. We're following the traces of a psycho-group from Denmark which became quite rich since it's foundation 26 years ago. We were told that the bosses have disappeared for years now and are living luxuriously in some tax haven in the Caribbean. As far as we knew was Tvind-Humana a cult combine which exploits it's members and puts this so "earned" money in plantations and finance funds.
             Some Danish reporters wrote that Tvind's background men own huge pieces of land and one of the most important managers is Soren Sorensen.    Kurt Simonsen, a reporter of the Boulevard paper "Ekstra-Bladet" from Arhus, investigated in Belize in 1991. He discovered the plantations of a Sorensen-company called Tropical Produce Limited, but he never saw the "Mystery Man".    Before our trip Simonsen faxed us a detailed map and warned: "Be careful!   The Tvind people cooperate with the government." He also recommended a person we could talk to: Dean Barrow, the vize-premier of Belize.
               There is only one phone in Conventional Hotel and it is in the office of Mister Sosa. While we're ringing the ministry we ask him about Tropical Produce Limited.   He gets suspicious: "Tropical Produce? Are you looking for Soren Sorensen?"   We get a bit nervous and tell him that we're writing a "Travel Guide", just in case. Whether he believed it or not he starts telling us about Sorensen, his private jet, the 100,000-dollar Lamborghini ("the only one in Belize"), the huge plantations in the South of the country.   Then all of a sudden Sosa asks: "Your job seems to be quite dangerous." We look at him surprised and he says with a big smile: "You always hear about journalists found dead."
                 We don't sleep very well that night and the next morning after having tried to get in contact with the minister in vain again, we decide to go there ourselves. The secretary sends us to Carlos Ramirez, the boss of the licence/concession department.   He knows Tropical Produce Limited and has also heard of Sorensen. "They are from Denmark and we are glad about every investor. They produce mangos, bananas and oranges. ... It's true that they own lots of property, probably the biggest mango plantation of America. T hey didn't have to pay taxes for 3 years but they create work and pay their workers the minimum salary of 2 Belize Dollars(=1US$). Development work is this of course not, no this is only business." Where the investors get their money from he does not know but isn't interested either. He says: "Listen, Mister, these Danish guys sit down there in Mango Creek, this is so far away that we do not get best information. As far as we know are they doing a good job."
                  Airport Belize City, 15th of March 1996.
                  We're waiting on the Cessna to the South. We still have some time and think about the facts we found out about Sorensen. It's not much. He's about 45 years old, is said to be reserved and has obviously influence. What would wait for us in the South ? Would we also get in trouble with the police like Simonsen when he walked too far into these plantations in 1991?   Back then Simonsen reported of horrendous circumstances the labourers had to live in under the rule of the Danish: "People who live in dirty shacks, brutally exploited for a poor salary." Simonsen wrote of "plantation-slaves" and called Sorensen a colonial patron.
                   After having arrived in Placencia we book the Monkey-River-Tour for the next day. By motor boat we go deep inside the jungle till we finally reach a village. We talk to Deryl Willeby, a local, and he tells us about the decline of his village. "It started when they planted the bananas in Cowpen close to Mango Creek.   Since then we don't catch many fishes anymore. The water is sick!"   Willeby also mentions Sorensen: "People are treated like slaves there! But if you're wearing a tie you can do anything in this country." It seems we're on the right track ...                 Placencia, 17th of March 1996.
                    We take a boat to Big Creek the only big harbour in Belize. Without Big Creek there probably wouldn't be any plantations. Some workers are loading a ship with bananas and orange juice, we ask them for the permission to take some photos. "No problem !!" Suddenly a jeep is coming very fast and stops hard in front of us. A man jumps out wearing a gun. "This is private property, Sir" he threatens. "We don't like people investigating here." We pretend to be harmless tourists which gets him confused. "We have problems with the trade union, they always send some spies. And if you won't go immediately you'll have a problem too."

To be continued.......

Plantations:

Monkey River Estate (Mango, 5000 hectares) Download booklet - Caribbean Farming in Belize

Monkey River Estate (5000 hectares) America's largest mango plantation. Bought from an American owner for $5-6 million, money sourced from the Caymans, by Soren Sorensen, who lives there at Mango Walk. more

Cowpen Farm (150 hectares) Bananas. Bought from Ffyffes, 1986

more

    Cowpen   (bananas)

    Swasey River estate

    Pearl Estate

    Riversdale

    Salt Creek

[Source: Danish press and other reports]



    Paynes creele   [?]                                                  [Politiken 6 Dec 1998]

Companies:

Tropical Farming Ltd

Cowpen Farm Ltd

Farm 1 Ltd

Monkey River Estate

People:

Soeren Soerensen ("The Farmer")

Andreas Stier

Newspaper reports:

"In Denmark the government pays a large proportion of the salaries for the 600 or so Tvind teachers. Most of them hand over the money to a "general fund".... During the early 1980s Tvind established two charitable foundations, Common Ownership Fund [Faelleseje] and Estate. Between 1983 and 1987 around £7 million was transferred from the general fund to the foundations to buy properties for the Tvind schools, as well as plantations In St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Grand Cayman and Belize."

[Source: The Guardian, 1993]

Critics ... pointed to very low wages paid to workers on Tvind's plantations in Belize and St Lucia.

[Source: The Guardian 1993]

Henning Bjornlund [former Tvind financial director] stubbornly denies Poul Jorgensen's statements to a couple of Danish papers about the Caribbean adventure being over. "That's unthinkable. Tvind still owns all five banana and mango plantations in Belize for instance," Bjornlund says

Then why does Poul Jorgensen tell the papers that the Belize plantations have been sold?

"That's just a smoke screen. We probably changed the structure of the company and sold them to ourselves."

Is it possible you are misinformed?

"I think that's unthinkable. Hell, I bought all those plantations. I visited Poul Jorgensen in November 1994, where, as always, we talked everything through. The plantations are my babies. Do you think he wouldn't have told me if they'd been sold? No — we talk about everything….."

[Source: Ekstra Bladet, 1995]

The fact is that Ekstra Bladet visited four of Tvind's five plantations in Belize in March of 1993. At all four plantations, the directors were old Tvind people from the 1970s, co-founders of, among other things, Faelleseje and Estate.

[From Ekstra Bladet, May 1996:]

"As early as 1991, Ekstra Bladet visited four of the five Tvind plantations in the Latin American state of Belize. One thing in common for all of them was that unions were forbidden on the Tvind farms.... Even if Tvind's development organisation "Humana" officially claims that they make development aid at the farms, there was no education or medical care."

[Ekstra Bladet, Sept 1996]

"La plantation de mangues 'Monkey River Estate' à Belize, est - avec ses 5000 ha, dont 2000 seulement en culture - probablement la plus grande d'Amérique latine. Elle a été achetée à un Américain pour 5 à 6 mio de dollars (venant des Iles Caymans) par Soren Hofdahl Sorensen. Ce Danois, habitant sur la propriété à Mango Walk, dirige 2 autres sociétés, établies aux Iles Caymans : 'Tropical Farming Ltd' et 'Tropical Produce Ltd'. 'Cowpen Farms Ltd., une fille de Tropical Farming, avait acquis en 1986 déjà du gouvernement du Belize, une plantation de bananes de 150 ha, vendue après sa faillite à la multinationale Fyffes ! Plusieurs centaines de travailleurs, surtout des immigrés du Salvador, du Honduras ou du Guatemala, doivent vivre d'un salaire d'un dollar l'heure et sont soumis aux effets néfastes d'utilisation massive de pesticides. L'or!ganisations syndicale des travailleurs est contrariée. Les plantations sont gérées de telle manière qu'elles génèrent un bénéfice net pour le groupe. Le marché s'est orienté des USA vers l'Europe. HPP et Fyffes ont collaboré pour le développement des pesticides appropriées pour leurs plantations voisines. Humana, y compris en Belgique, a soutenu pendant des années ce 'projet de développement'..."

[Source: Belgian NGO report