Two luxury apartments on private island near Miami
5302 and 5352 Fisher Island Drive
In 2001, journalists from the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten traced fugitive Amdi Petersen to a private ‘millionaire’s retreat’ off Miami – Fisher Island. The paper reported the Teachers Group had bought two apartments, 5302 and 5352 Fisher Island Drive, one valued at $6m, in 1991 and 2000. They were being secretly used by Amdi Petersen and Kirsten Larsen, with other Teachers Group leaders.
Fisher Island
Fisher Island is a high security millionaire’s retreat with high rise private apartments, a top class hotel, golf course, marina and sandy beaches. It is reached by a private ferry from Miami, patrolled by security guards. It was described by Conde Naste Traveller magazine in 1998 as ‘One of the best places to stay in the world.’ Among famous residents and visitors have been Oprah Winfrey, Luciano Pavarotti, Ricky Martin, Julia Roberts, Robert de Niro, Sylvester Stallone, and tennis stars André Agassi and Boris Becker.
The luxury apartments
Number 5302 Fisher Island Drive is a luxury 10th floor penthouse apartment with several bedrooms, five bathrooms, a roof terrace, fitness room, outdoor spa, and picture windows overlooking Miami, according to the Jyllands-Posten report. There are marble floors throughout. The 91 square metre living room was furnished with a piano, a sofa and ten leather-upholstered chairs, corner bar and lit by a chandelier. The master bedroom had a four-poster bed, jacuzzi and steam shower.
According to the newspaper, one room was was furnished as an office with computers and ‘all the necessary technological equipment for running a worldwide business empire’.
In the underground car park were two 8-cylinderMercedes ML55 four wheel drive vehicles with tinted windows.
‘An apartment for the dog’
Jyllands-Posten reported the whole apartment had been redecorated to Petersen’s instructions in 1991 by an interior designer at a cost of $624,000. Jyllands-Posten also reported that Amdi Petersen, Kirsten Larsen and Anne Hansen were all members of the Fisher Island Golf Course (membership numbers E0070 and E9006) – fees $98,479.
J-P further alleged that the second apartment, 5352, was bought for ‘Amdi Petersen’s dog’. Petersen has two thoroughbred Leonbergers that accompany him everywhere. Fisher Island rules allow only one pet per apartment. The solution, the paper said, was for the Teachers Group to buy a smaller second apartment in the same block five floors below. This apartment was bought in October 2000 for $792,000.
Who bought the properties?
According to J-P, the penthouse was bought by J. F. Parson, a Tvind company in Tampa, Florida, for $4.3 million in December 1991. It was immediately resold to another Tvind company registered in the British Virgin Islands, the Markham Corporation. A similar method was used to buy and transfer offshore the second flat method in 2000. In this case, the ultimate purchaser was a third Tvind company, also registered in the British Virgin Islands, Xoreux Limited
News reports
The Man in Miami (Jyllands Posten, 28th October 2001)
Ritzau, (13 August 2003).
Summary: Papers recently delivered from the USA about Amdi’s luxury apartments on Fisher Island may be a gold mine for the prosecutor because they reveal a lot about the power structure in Tvind, Poul Gade said to De Bergske Blade on Wedneday. …. In addition, the prosecutor is working to get access to the accounts in France and England which could reveal the cash flow in the Tvind organisation, and to confiscate further documents from the British auditor David Swain who was examined during the summer vacations.
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Updated 19th March 2010
