Humana People-to-People Alert

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Planet Aid UK

  Planet Aid UK and the Teachers Group  

Planet Aid UK is a Teachers Group company.

This commercial enterprise based in the north of England collects old clothes in roadside collection boxes and door-to-door and states that it sells them 'for Africa'. Through links with various schools and colleges such as the CICD, it also helps 'train volunteers' to spend a gap year in the developing world. Yes, but....... Planet Aid is not a registered charity. In fact, quite the reverse - it must be regarded as an integral part of a $860 million multinational business and commercial empire.

Planet Aid is controlled by the Teachers Group, a secretive body tainted by serious allegations of criminal financial misconduct. The Teachers Group is an international organisation based in Zimbabwe, whose leaders are currently facing prosecution for alleged fraud in Europe and are in hiding from the police. Any claims that there is no connection between Planet Aid UK and the Teachers Group or the Danish Tvind organisation are entirely false.

  The story of Planet Aid UK  

Planet Aid UK [company details] was incorporated in October 1998 - at a crucial time in the story of Teachers Group enterprises in Britain.

The original and first Teachers Group used-clothing enterprise in Britain, started in 1987, was called Humana UK, just one of many Humana enterprises in Europe. It was a registered UK charity. But in 1996, the Charity Commission began an investigation which, in late 1998, led to the closure of Humana UK on grounds of fraud.

Even before the Teachers Group had lost control of Humana, it had arranged to create a replacement used clothes collection business. The first new business was Green World Recycling, founded in the UK in April 1998 and still going. Planet Aid arrived six months later. Neither is a charity.

Company details for Planet Aid

 

 

  News and views about Planet Aid UK  

  Who runs Planet Aid?  

Birgit Soe (director and secretary).

Teachers Group manager of Planet Aid UK, and also a director of CICD (The College of International Cooperation and Development), the Teachers Group college at Winestead Hall, near Hull.

Jesper Wohlert (director)

A very dedicated graduate of Tvind who has worked for the Teachers Group all over Europe, in some of its most controversial enterprises.

In Britain, before becoming a director of Planet Aid, he was a director of Humana UK - the clothes enterprise closed down by the Charity Commission for fraud in 1998 - and of All Europe Satellite Broadcasting, a company formed in the 1980s and considered by Danish police a front company for illicit fund movements, He was also associated with two other British companies.

In the early 90s he was president and secretary of Humana France, closed down for tax evasion. He has also worked for Humana in Holland, Belgium and Germany and is now head of Humana in Spain and Portugal.

Helle Nielsen (director)

Address given as Bogense in Denmark

  What's in a name?  

Planet Aid is a name used by the Teachers Group since around 1997 for a branch of its profitable used clothes business in the United States.

Planet Aid Inc in the US operates in a very similar way to Planet Aid UK with revenues supposedly going to DAPP charities abroad. It has been the subject of many investigative articles and broadcasts in the last two years, but so far there has been a failure to investigate by US authorities.

Locals get bin removed from outside Spar in Exeter

Sept 2007: Local residents have asked the county council to remove a Planet Aid bin outside a Spar supermarket in Union Road, Exeter.

Devon County Council officials found it was on public land without permission and told Planet Aid to remove it, or face having it confiscated.

Source: local sources.

 

 

 

 

Asda evicts Planet Aid from supermarket car parks

Sept 2006: Supermarket chain Asda has sent legal letters to evict Planet Aid from its car parks.

Planet Aid bins have appeared without permission outside 35 Asda stores. Planet Aid was asked several times to remove the bins, but instead replaced them with bins labelled 'Gaia' and 'Green World Recycling' - also linked to Humana.

Birgit Soe said that the company was not a registered charity because that would prevent it buying and selling clothing, its main form of fundraising. She was not able to provide any audited accounts.

Asda's head of corporate and social responsibility Ian Bowles said it was important to justify Ada's customers good faith. Asda's lawyers gave Planet Aid until the end of August to remove the bins.

Source: The Times, September 4th, 2006.