ADPP, oil money and illegal cash transfers
ADPP (Ajuda de Desenvolvimento de Povo para Povo – Development Aid from People to People) is the Teachers Group’s arm in Angola. It has been in existence since 1986, and for virtually all that time has been run by TG member Rikke Viholm.
Illegal cash transfers
ADPP aid projects in Angola are supposed to be funded through the sale of old clothes and donations in Europe. ADDP Angola has also benefitted from a second, though less well-known, funding source – money from US oil companies working off the Angola coast, as part of an Angolan government programme.
However it is now believed that hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations made to ADPP were never spent on aid work, but instead returned to Denmark.
In around 2000, Danish TV reported alleged illegal money transfers between Angola and Denmark. TV2 Interviewed Britta Junge, a former TG accountant, who told them that part of her job in the mid-1990s had been to withdraw cash from a bank in Angola and smuggle it by air to Denmark. At this time up to $30,000 a week was returned to Europe this way, she said.
It is now believed this money was placed in offshore accounts and could have been used to buy the Floryl estate in Brazil.
Her revelation prompted the police inquiry which ultimately led to Teachers Group leaders being put on trial fror fraud.
Smuggling cash in suitcases from Angola to Europe
A secret memo from finance officer Niels Holst on how to launder cash from Angola
Oil money
How did the Teachers group profit from American oil money? Almost uniquely in Africa, Angola is rich in offshore oil deposits. These oil fields are being exploited by US and European oil companies, with the agreement of the Angola government.
According to sources knowledgeable about Angolan oil politics, this situation gave a unique opportunity to the Tvind Teachers Group to profit financially, while appearing to support development work.
Western oil money is potentially of enormous benefit to Angola. Under an agreement with the Angolan government, oil companies are obliged to pay large sums into a so-called ‘Social Fund’, operated by the Angolan oil ministry, Sonangol, in return for the right to drill for oil.
Grants from the fund are awarded annually by Sonangol to western aid agencies. According to our sources, the Tvind Teachers Group has for years enjoyed a politically very close relationship with Sonangol and the Angolan government, and thus been awarded with unusually generous social fund money – no questions asked.
In war-toen Angola, it would have been easy for ADPP to re-route oil company money out of the country, without either Sonangol or the oil companies being aware that it was not being used for social projects.
Junge believes much of the money she returned to Denmark came from American oil companies.
Further information on oil money:
‘Africa Confidential’ reference (2000)
Oil and War in Angola
paper by Jedrzej George Frynas and Geoffrey Wood
(includes references to Tvind and ADPP)
ADPP: Witness
News
ADPP Angola awarded $1.5m from USAID
Last revised 13th July 2009
