Amdi found in Miami

from Jyllands-Posten, Denmark, Sunday 28th October 2001

By ORLA BORG, JAKOB RUBIN and MICHAEL ULVEMAN

Mogens Amdi Petersen, leader of the Danish Tvind organisation, is hiding on a private tropical island, while earnings from companies in The Third World and Tvind-teacher salaries keep pouring into his coffers. 

Fisher Island

Mogens Amdi Petersen, controversial leader of the Danish Tvind organisation known as Humana in English-speaking countries, who disappeared 22 years ago, is living a life of luxury at one of the worlds most exclusive addresses. In todays edition of Jyllands-Posten, we are able to reveal that Mogens Amdi Petersen is living in an 810 square meter large penthouse of a market value of 6 million dollars. The flat is situated on the fashionable private tropical island of Fisher Island off Miami, USA.

It is fitted out with marble floors, five bathrooms, a Jacuzzi, a steam shower and a fitness room. When Mogens Amdi Petersen took possession of it in 1991 via the Markham Corporation, a Tvind company, it had been furnished and decorated for 624.504 dollars.

Among the other inhabitants of the island are world-known artists and sports stars. A large number of private guards protect them. Tvind is paying about 21,800 dollars a month in order that Mogens Amdi Petersen may stay on the island.

Mogens Amdi Petersen and his girlfriend, Kirsten Larsen, are both members of the Fisher Island Club. Membership of the club costs 100,000 dollars. Mr Petersen, as he is called, is the prime customer of the islands golf shop. He has told his private fitness coach about wild animals - giraffes and zebras - on his African farm in Zimbabwe.

Hundreds of Tvind teachers who give up their salaries against board and lodging and a few hundred kroners pocket money a month finance Mogens Amdi Petersens life of luxury. Furthermore, Mogens Amdi Petersens lifestyle is financed by companies in more than 70 countries - often under the pretext of being humanitarian organisations and hence tax exempt.

Last year the Xoreux Limited, a Tvind company, bought a second flat in the island for 792,640 dollars. The reason was that Mogens Amdi Petersen is the owner of two large Leonbergers, and only one dog per flat is allowed. The dogs accompany Mogens Amdi Petersen and Kirsten Larsen on their trips to Africa.

The disclosure of Mogens Amdi Petersens luxury life comes at a time when the Tvind organisation is in big trouble in Denmark. The police in the Jutland town of Holstebro have charged Mogens Amdi Petersen and other Tvind leaders with tax evasion and breach of trust to the tune of 9 million dollars.

The Tvind leader hided away in 1979 and left his position as leader of The Necessary Teacher Training College (Det Ndvendige Seminarium) in Ulfborg near Holstebro which he had founded nine years before. He has succeeded in hiding from the authorities and the press, not least because no one has been able to recognise him. Until today, his most recent photo dated from 1979.

However, today Jyllands-Posten is able to reveal what 62-year old Mogens Amdi Petersen looks like nowadays.