Now Interpol can hunt them
For the last five years they have been wanted – by the Danish Police. Now they can be hunted – by Interpol, which means the police in most countries in the world. The Danish State Attorney have – according to legal changes of law – now made it possible to ask Interpol to go for and arrest the four fugitive topleaders in the Teachers Group, who runs the Tvind-empire, that owns Humana People to People. Amongst them the founder and number one Mogens Amdi Petersen.
The Danish Police have tried to find them in the last five years – since September 2006, when the Danish State Attorney decided to take them to the Danish High Court for tax fraud and embezzlement. Four of them had gone free in a trial earlier that year, one of them, Sten Byrner was sentenced to one year imprisonment. But they all fled Denmark, and the police were therefore unable to deliver the appeal directly to them (one of them, Malene Gunst, was caught in Heathrow Airport, London, October 1 2009 coming in on an airplane from Mexico). The personal delivery of the appeal was – until now – the only legal procedure for an appeal trial. That’s also the reason the Danish police have not could ask Interpol to go for them. Only the police in the Schengen- and EU-countries have since September 14 2006 legally been able to withhold them in airports for instance – but only until an official Danish representative could hand over the appeal warrant.
Now the laws have been changed. And the Danish State Attorney have therefore a couple of weeks ago (July 14) published the appeal in the Danish States magazine for official announcements (Statstidende). That’s sufficient. And that means, that Interpol all over the world can be mobilized to look for and arrest the four Tvind-leaders, Mogens Amdi Petersen, Kirsten Ambrosius Larsen, Christie Pipps, Sten Byrner.
Untill now the Danish Police have only had limited help from Interpol. But that limited help made it possible to withhold one of the original five fugitive Tvind-leaders in Heathrow Airport in October 2009. The police in Mexico informed that same day the Danish Police that Malene Gunst was on a plane from Mexico City heading for London. The British authorities withheld Malene Gunst in the airport until a representative from the Danish state could deliver the appeal personally to her.
The Danish Police had already late 2006 asked Mexico to find out if Malene Gunst and the other fugitive leaders could be found on Tvinds new luxury headquarter in San Juan de las Pulgas, Baja California in Mexico. The Mexican authorities replied in March 2007 that to their knowledge the five Tvind-leaders were not living there. In both February, March, May and July 2008 representatives from the Danish state officially asked the Mexicans for cooperation. The resultat of it was the tip on October 1 2009 that lead to the withhold of Malene Gunst in the London-airport.
In September 2006 the Danish Police also contacted Interpol in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, where Tvinds Humana-organisations official headquarters are placed. Interpol in South Africa reportedin December that year back to the Danish Police about the fugitive leaders travelling by plane between South Africa and Zimbabwe. An official contact from the Danish Police to the Zimbabwean authorities and Interpol in that country asking for help to find the fugitive leaders was made in February 2009. The Zimbabweans never answered the request. Tvind and Humana have always been protected by the Zimbabwean dictatorship lead by Robert Mugabe.
In the first Danish trial there were eight accused Tvind-leaders. There was not raised an appeal against two of them. But there was against Poul Jørgensen, the right hand of Mogens Amdi Petersen taking care of their legal business in Denmark. He was found by the police in Denmark and brought to trial in the High Court, where he was sentenced to two and a half year imprisonment.
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Humana’s top leaders can now be hunted by Interpol
Campus California…’Your Rags to Their Riches.’
The campus building in Etna, California has been sold, the headquarters have been moved, there is no more school, and “TG” has been dropped from the name. But has Campus California really severed ties to the Teachers Group? No. Read the explosive article written by Matthew Smith of the SFweekly…. Read full article here.
Malawi – ‘DAPP in secret money swindling’
The Malawi online newspaper Nyasa Times (1st March 2011) reports that “Employees at Development Aid from People to People in Malawi (DAPP) have turned against their employers accusing them of secretly swindling money for unknown activities.
“The workers claim that DAPP Malawi asks them to submit everything they have to the organisation and stop them from caring for their family members….” Read the full article.
DAPP is the Teachers Group’s organisation in the country, acting on behalf of the Teachers Group and in control of all its financial affairs, including how money raised in Europe and the United States allegedly for Humana and Gaia projects is actually used. We will bring you more details as we investigate this.
Help build our page on Malawi
OUR DOSSIER ON THE TEACHERS GROUP
No charity cases: Some clothing boxes are not what they seem to be
DECATUR, ILLINOIS – An investigation into U’SAgain clothes boxes by the Herald & Review reveals how the company is ‘misleading’ citizens. The newspaper points out that U’SAgain is a for-profit business owned by a Belize-based firm – Fairbank, Cooper, & Lyle Ltd. And both are part ‘of a massive international conglomerate with roots in Denmark, called Tvind, or Teachers Group.’
OUR DOSSIER ON THE TEACHERS GROUP
Successful Tvind Alert 2011 financial appeal
Tvind Alert 2011 financial appeal – our target is $1,000 to secure this website’s future for at least the next year, and help pay for continuing research. If you have benefited from this website and would like to support our appeal, please visit http://www.tvindalert.com/support-us/ and make a donation by PayPal or bank transfer.
We’ve just received the latest bill for web hosting and need to pay $200 within a few weeks. As we’ve recently paid several hundred dollars to download documents and accounts for some of Tvind’s many companies and offshore accounts round the world, we are very short of money.
STOP PRESS – MONDAY: we have raised at least $400 on the first day of the appeal. Thanks to all our supporters. We will keep the appeal open for six weeks until or until we have met our target of $1,000. The important thing now is that Tvind Alert’s future is secured for at least the rest of the year and we can concentrate on what’s important. A couple of very promising news stories are in the pipeline – watch this space.
What happens to your old clothes?
Have you ever wondered what happens to the clothes you dump in the charity bin?
Planet Aid bins on a street in Brooklyn, NY
This website gives one answer. This is an exposure of one very large ‘charity’, which collects clothes all over the world ‘for Africa’ – and then sells them through a maze of privately-owned companies, to pocket the money. The same organisation has many other ways of enriching itself, with offers of ‘humanitarian’ work and international volunteering…at a price.
In reality, though, it is a story of an $860 million property empire based on deceit: corruption, hot money, secret companies, luxury property deals, offshore havens, police investigations, cultism, exploitation, disenchantment and shattered dreams.
Olympic size swimming pool at TG complex, San Juan de las Pulgas, Mexico
Of course, there are two sides to the story. Perhaps the fugitive leader Amdi Petersen really is a millionaire philanthropist. This is the story of Humana People-to-People, Tvind or the Teachers Group…also known as Planet Aid, Gaia, U’SAgain, DAPP, Green World, IICD, CICD, CCTG (and many other names). Yes, it’s big. It could well be collecting clothes down your street. It could be advertising for ‘volunteers for Africa’ in your local paper. If you have never heard of this organisation before, read the column on the right, ‘The Story in Five Minutes’. Then read our dossier. And then ask yourself what you can do.
OUR DOSSIER ON THE TEACHERS GROUP
Artur’s story: ‘They’re crazy about money’
“Perfect fit for fraud”: how ‘Humana’ uses its charity shops in Norway to divert millions from ‘foreign aid’
A series of articles in Vårt Land, Norwegian newspaper
1. “A Perfect Fit for Fraud”
2. “Norwegian embassy gave millions”
3. “Politicians say support for UFF ‘outrageous’ “
When Norwegians dump old clothes in ‘UFF’ charity bins or buy garments from a hip second hand charity shop called ‘Underground’ in Oslo, they assume they are doing something to help the poor in Africa. After all, that’s what it says on the posters. And it’s certainly what the shop’s owners want you to believe.
But in a series of detailed articles in a leading Norwegian newspaper, Vårt Land, the charity behind the shops and bins, UFF Norway, is now conclusively revealed to be a huge ‘swindle’.
In an investigation conducted jointly with www.tvindalert.com, Vårt Land mounted a thorough probe into several companies and a ‘foundation’ all linked to UFF Norway, and all operated by the same small clique of people. What they found is a secret, sophisticated racket to launder money through clever accounting away from ‘foreign aid’ and into private hands.
Two-thirds of the money raised ‘for humanitarian work’ by UFF never reaches the poor. It is diverted before it even reaches Africa. Large sums are transferred as ‘membership fees’ to a company in Switzerland. Hundreds of thousands more ‘leaks away’ from foreign aid through loans and property rents. Tens of millions have been spent on a private ‘palace’ in Mexico. And despite all this, UFF Norway is accepted as a ‘bona fide charity’ by Norwegian charity regulators, because of a loophole in charity law.
Tvind Alert and the Vårt Land journalists followed the money trail through a ‘cash laundering machine’ and a 72-year old wanted cult leader on the run from European police forces, to a multi-million dollar ‘desert palace’ in Mexico.
How much more?
This is not an isolated swindle. In fact, UFF Norway is just one small outpost in a very large corporate structure of similar ‘aid charities’ and used clothes recyclers all over the world which are run by the very same mysterious organisation – a cult-like body called the Teachers Group – and include such well known names in Europe and the United States as Humana People-to-People, Planet Aid, Gaia and U’SAgain, and charities in Africa and India with names such as DAPP, ADPP, Hope, TCE, Child Aid and Children’s Town. Altogether, these connected bodies handle millions and millions of dollars of ‘foreign aid’ – and they are now getting huge sums of money from major aid donors like the US government, USAID and the Bill Clinton foundation.
Although many official bodies choose to ignore this, it is a well established fact that all these ‘foreign aid’ enterprises are collectively run, acting together in a single economic system. If UFF Norway is a ‘swindle’, then what of the other Teachers Group all over the world operated on identical terms – with secret companies, double accounting, the same people who authorise donations being on the board of recipient bodies, and other accountancy scams? How much money is being bled internationally from foreign aid budgets by this one organisation?
Vårt Land: “UFF: Pengevask og luksuspalass” (with link to full article in Norwegian)
Danish TV item on Vart Land investigation (video)
OUR DOSSIER ON THE TEACHERS GROUP
Namibians say the Teachers Group uses DAPP money for houses
Former employees of Humana-run projects in Namibia have staged a demonstration against the Teachers Group, claiming they were exploited by the “cult-like organisation”, and sacked after joining a local trade union. The former employees also allege the TG used DAPP money for its own purposes, including houses for its own members.
The sacked employees told the Namibia New Era newspaper that almost all senior managers in DAPP were members of the Teachers Group, and met secretly once a month in TG houses that were actually paid for out of DAPP ‘foreign aid’ money. They were sacked after joining the Namibia Food and Allied Workers Union. Full story.
First article: Mystery Shrouds Club’s Link to DAPP
Second article: Protest Opens Can of Worms at DAPP
Help write our page on Namibia
Our dossier on the Teachers Group
Questions asked after DRH Norway volunteer dies in a road crash collecting clothes
Exclusive to Tvind Alert/Aid Alert
By Michael Durham and Madhavi Rajadhyaksha
A young Humana People-to-People volunteer from the Czech Republic has been killed and a second seriously injured in a road crash while collecting old clothes for UFF in Norway, it has emerged. Questions are now being asked about the condition of the vehicle used for clothes collections by students at the DRH Norway college, when the crash happened on February 14th.
The tragedy is the latest in a series of scandals that have called into question the health and safety standards within Humana and Tvind and the welfare of volunteers in colleges and on foreign placements around the world. Coming tomorrow – Saturday: Norwegian newspaper Vårt Land reveals the secrets of UFF, in a joint investigation with Tvind Alert.
Our dossier on the Teachers Group
