Used clothes broker, USA
Links have been restored
Garson and Shaw Inc is a Teachers Group controlled, profit-making company based in Atlanta, Georgia. It is not a charity and does not collect clothes from the public but is a commercial broker, buying and selling used garments on behalf of the Teachers Group and other clients.
We are certain this company is central to maximising the private profit the Teachers Group makes from the used clothes donations to its ‘charitable’ clothes collectors, Planet Aid and Gaia, and its for-profit enterprise U’SAgain.
HOT MONEY
How Garson & Shaw creams off money from used clothes donations
We are certain that the Teachers Group’s three ‘charitable’ used clothes collectors, Planet Aid, Gaia and U’SAgain, act privately in concert with Garson & Shaw to maximise the private profit from old clothes and divert money away from charity. All the enterprises are run by Teachers Group members who know each other well. Garson & Shaw and U’SAgain are both owned by the same company, Fairbank, Cooper and Lyle, which is a Teachers Group-owned offshore company registered in Jersey and run from Belize.
Any money made by Garson & Shaw is pure profit for the Teachers Group and will not show up on the charitable accounts, so allowing the charities to claim they made less to give away. Here is how we think it works. Take Planet Aid. Like a normal broker, Garson & Shaw buys used clothes from Planet Aid and sells them on the old clothes market on Planet Aid’s behalf. Maybe they sell them to other Teachers Group businesses. Either way, Garson & Shaw is Planet Aid’s biggest customer. The sinister aspect of this is that Garson & Shaw and Planet Aid have a hidden relationship – both are covertly controlled by the Teachers Group. The same goes for the other Teachers Group clothes collection enterprises.
But Planet Aid and Garson & Shaw have a second commercial relationship. Besides supplying product for Garson & Shaw’s customers, Planet Aid also uses Garson & Shaw as its own sales broker. That is to say that Garson and Shaw is paid a percentage of the proceeds on every sale, anywhere, that Planet Aid ever makes. G&S is the main broker for U’SAgain and Gaia too and charges commission on their sales. The accounts for Planet Aid show that Garson & Shaw’s sales commission for 2006 and 2007 from Planet Aid alone amounted to a total of $1,311,601.
In other words, Garson and Shaw is reaping a steady profit for the Teachers Group from the ‘charitable’ old clothes donations.
Full article – Hot Money: Planet Aid
HOT MONEY
Witness – insider
A Planet Aid insider sent us an email containing several allegations:
VAT evasion
“Not only do [Garson & Shaw] divert profits from used clothing via selling to Tvind companies and business friends, companies like [a Canadian company], they also use these companies to avoid VAT. VAT is avoided with other European company transactions between European companies and Garson and Shaw.
“G&S also reduces their US tax liability by writing off GS financial loads shipped to other Tvind companies and/or companies that were owed $’s from other Tvind companies that went bankrupt.
Friends for Ever
“Friends For Ever, never set up as a company, any expenses for the exibits are ran through the hosting Tvind company and the cash from sales sent directly to the Tvind Friends For Ever company. Again reducing US tax liability on any GS income.
Students ‘exploited’
“They bring ‘students’ from Europe/Africa to the USA for ‘training’ then make them work in the Tvind companies as training. The students then stay in the houses the Teachers Group owns and the students are givin a stipend for working but are charged $1200-1500 for room and board and given a couple hundred for spending money. The Tvind company they are working for pays the stipend and the room and board money goes to pay for the houses.”
WHO RUNS GARSON & SHAW?
All Teachers Group members:
President, CEO, Sales Manager – Inger Lise Jepsen (Lisa Jepsen)
Export Sales Manager – Ann Margaret Jonsson
Finance Manager – Poul Jorgensen [but not the same Poul Jorgensen currently in jail in Denmark for fraud]
FURTHER INFORMATION
For more on how the Teachers Group created hidden profits from clothes sales in Europe, see also: Hot money: an insider reveals the European clothes scam (2009)
Revised: 11th March 2010
