Russia: Tvind logging enterprise collapses among accusations of fraud
March 2008
TOP TVIND TEACHERS “ON THE RUN FROM
RUSSIAN SECURITY POLICE”
Investigation exclusive to tvindalert.com by Frede Jakobsen and Michael Durham
A huge Teachers Group logging operation in Siberia has ended in disaster, with two leading Tvind ‘Teachers’ on the run from Russian security forces after accusations of a $40,000 fraud.
Flemming Gustafsson and Birgit Dinesen, two senior Teachers Group members in charge of the 101,000-hectare plantation at Pit Gorodnok, 300 kilometres north of Krasnoyarsk, are believed to have fled to South America or Africa after receiving a visit from agents of the Russian FSB – successor to the KGB secret police.
The pair are accused of failing to deliver a consignment of timber to a client in the United Arab Emirates, after taking a $40,000 payment in advance. The Russian-owned middle eastern client company called in the FSB, who threatened to jail the two ‘for terrorism’.
Tvind leased the enormous forest in the Severoeniseysk Region in the heart of Siberia in around 2003, and ran it as a sawmill, logging and export operation through two Teachers Group-owned companies, Taiga Timber Industries (TTI) and Taiga Timber Trading (TTT).
The Teachers Group operation suddenly ended about 18 months ago. According to our sources, Russian former employees, FSB agents confronted Gustafsson and Dinesen in May or June 2006 and threatened to jail them ‘for terrorism’ unless they paid back the $40.000 to the client, named as Strongwood Ltd. “We know that you are not terrorists, but we will put you in prison for a couple of years, then let you out and maybe even tell you that we are sorry”, the FSB-agents are said to have told the TG bosses.
Gustafsson and Dinesen fled, possibly to Brazil or Zimbabwe. The Teachers Group owns a similar plantation, Floryl, in Bahia, Brazil, at the centre of the current fraud trial in Denmark. The pair also manage big TG forest plantations in Zimbabwe.
According to the same ex-employees, during the two or three or years the Teachers Group ran the Taiga companies, TTI and TTT experienced the same problems as other TG-owned companies around the world. The TG bosses appeared to make huge efforts to get as much money out of the businesses as possible. They took money from bank accounts without proper documentation, paid salaries without social taxes, took foreign loans without registering them, and failed to make tax declarations.
Originally, Taiga traded mostly with other Teachers Group-related timber companies – for example Trayton Timber in China and McCorry & Co in Malaysia.
This is not the first time Gustafsson and Dinesen have been on the run together. In around 2000, when they were managing a Teachers Group used-clothes company, the pair suddenly fled from Europe to Kenya, East Africa, when Hungarian police tried to question them about the collapse of a Dutch Tvind-company, EC Trading. Gustafsson was also one of eight TG-leaders accused of money laundering by Belgian authorities in 2002. The case was dropped after legal arguments.
Another senior TG member, Kim Bonde Andersen stayed in Siberia for around six months after Gustafsson and Dinesen fled. Andersen, who was closely involved with the purchase of the Floryl plantation in Brazil, had originally opened and registered the Taiga companies with Russian tax authorities, and now tried to close them down. It has not been possible to find out whether he succeeded – but we know from a source in Krasnoyarsk that two Russian women stole what was left of the company and tried to run it. The Taiga web site, www.tti.ru, was out of action for months, although parts of it have recently returned.
DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE TG OPERATION IN SIBERIA, OR OTHER TG TIMBER COMPANIES?
PLEASE CONTACT US!
