Humana People-to-People Alert

Please help us keep this page up to date. Email new information to: contact@humana-alert.com

The 'prince' and the Prime Minister

Just a short time ago, in 2000, the Danish government was deeply embarrassed when it was revealed it had given large sums of public money to Tvind - the very organisation the Danish police are prosecuting for fraud - through a Chinese company, Trayton.

It said it was a mistake and promised it would not happen again.

So why is the Danish Pime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen hobnobbing with the Tvind 'crown prince' and Trayton boss Simon Lichtenberg?

See which other senior Danish politicians have been seduced by Tvind's Chinese 'Charm Offensive'.

> Beijing pictures

Lichtenberg on Lichtenberg......

"I am a member of the Teacher's Group...my money is the TG's money. Either it is invested in developing the business or I give the money to the Teacher's Group's work...."

(Interview with Danish TV, 2006. In Danish)

Listen to audio

  More links with Tvind  

 What is the Trayton Group?  

The Trayton Group is a successful manufacturing company in China. It was started in the 1990s by Simon Lichtenberg, a Danish graduate of Tvind. Lichtenberg is a high up member of the Teachers Group, much younger than other Tvind leaders, and is widely regarded as the Tvind 'crown prince'.

Trayton is actually a small family of seven companies. The main business is furniture manufacture in Shanghai and Jiaxing. According to the group website www.trayton.com, there are also retail/design consultancies and a timber trading concern.

Trayton exports furniture to Europe and the United States and at one time IKEA in Sweden was a customer. The group is closely linked to BoConcept, a chain of furniture shops with branches in London and other European cities.

  Is it a Tvind company?  

With Simon Lichtenberg as its boss, Trayton is certainly linked to the Teachers Group. It could be regarded as part of the 'Tvind Empire'. Lichtenberg, however, says it is not. He admits he donates more than $1 million of the company's profits to Tvind, but contends it does not make Trayton a 'Tvind company'

Trayton's connections with the Teachers Group were hidden for several years, until March 2000 when reporters Christian Jensen and Michael Bjerre from the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende travelled to China and exposed the link.

In two articles both published on 26th March 2000, Danish Government supports Tvind venture and The Chinese Mask of Tvind Berlingske Tidende revealed the existence of the company and its connection with Tvind to the public. Initially, Lichtenberg tried to deny any connection with the Teachers Group. The Danish government was severely embarrassed to find it had been ploughing millions of krone into Tvind unawares - at a time when it was trying to prevent Tvind from receiving more taxpayers money.

In 2004, in an interview with the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, Lichtenberg admitted he gave $1.1m a year - a third of his profits - to Tvind. Simon Lichtenberg Admits Chinese Trayton Makes Money for TG (Sept 2004). He made a similar admission in an interview broadcast on Danish TV in September, 2006.

  Who is Simon Lichtenberg?  

Simon Lichtenberg, aged 39 in 2006, is a Teachers Group child. His parents joined the TG when he was seven years old and he was brought up in a private Tvind school. He has a sister, Marie, also in the TG.

Lichtenberg went on to progress inside the TG, working for the organisation in Europe, Africa and Asia. Information given to Tvind Alert suggests that by the early 1990s he was one of a number of top-ranking TG members gathered together by Amdi Petersen in Miami and despatched around the world as part of a plan to expand Tvind's business empire. Lichtenberg was tasked with growing the Chinese market. The Trayton Group is the result.

He is now widely tipped as an eventual successor as the head of the Tvind Empire on the retirement of the present guru Mogens Amdi Petersen.

Simon Lichtenberg and Humana Alert

Simon Lichtenberg has made several attempts to have this web site shut down, using the libel law in England and Denmark. He has always failed.

The first was in early 2004, when www.tvindalert.com was hosted on a server in England. The Internet host company received a letter from lawyers threatening legal action unless every single reference to 'Trayton' and 'Simon Lichtenberg' was removed from the site - even links to the articles in Berlingske Tidende.

We asked for time. Internet law in England is notoriously weak and does not guarantee freedom of expression, so the Internet host company was at risk of being sued. Three days later, the company decided not to take the risk and deleted the site from the Internet with just a few hours warning in mid-2004.

This is why there are so many broken links and missing pictures on the site. In our rush to save the data, some erors were made and it is taking months to rebuild.

We moved the site to Denmark where there is greater protection for expression and it reopened two weeks later. Our new Internet host is the Danish provider TDC. For legal reasons www.tvindalert.com is now registered to Frede Farmand, the well known Danish journalist and TV presenter.

In November 2004, Lichtenberg took TDC to court in Denmark in a bid to have the site suppressed. The case was thrown out. In 2005, Lichtenberg tried again, this time together with another senior TG member, Jonas Israel, manager of the Tvind timber company McCorry & Co. In June 2006, the Danish judge ruled firmly in favour of 'Humana Alert' and said, in a crystal clear verdict, that www.tvindalert.com was not defamatory and is in the public interest.

TDC has robustly supported www.tvindalert.com throughout the legal proceedings and instructed a lawyer at their own expense to argue for www.tvindalert.com's right to state the facts.

In October 2006, the court's judgement in favour of TDC and www.tvindalert.com was confirmed by a higher court, the Østre Landsret. In January 2007, Copenhagen City Court also ruled in favour of TDC in a separate case and this verdict too was confirmed by Østre Landsret in January 2008.

  Trayton Holdings  

Trayton Holdings
Isle of Man

Sometimes, Simon Lichtenberg tried to give the impression in interviews that Trayton is just a business and he is the sole proprieter.

Not so simple. In fact, as Berlingske Tidende revealed, the Trayton Group is owned by Trayton Holdings - a Tvind offshore company registered in the Isle of Man, a UK tax haven.

According to Berlingske Tidende, the founding trustees of The Trayton Group were all long-time members of the Tvind Teachers Group: as well as Lichtenberg himself they included Kirsten Fuglsbjerg (aka Christie Pipps) and Neils Peter Holst.

Christie Pipps/Kirsten Fuglsbjerg (left) is a graduate of Tvind and a senior financial administrator of the Teachers Group - and one of the six senior members accused of fraud in the current (October 2006) court case. Neils Peter Holst has been described as Tvind's 'chief accountant'. Both are cited in the 2001 Danish police report. Trayton Holdings is definitely a 'Tvind company'.

Trayton Systems and
" s'Cool Tool "

This is the strange story of s'Cool Tool - a piece of computer hardware pre-loaded with the Tvind educational system DmM.

In 2001-2, Trayton's website included a link to a subsidiary Trayton Systems. Trayton System's business was apparently to make computers - hideous red and white boxes, supplied under the name s'Cool Tool.

The devicess came pre-loaded with educational software. What kind of educational software? A close look at the web site showed it to be Tvind's own-brand 'DmM' (the Definition of the Modern Method - a Tvind 'programme' widely used in its own schools and colleges) together with another jargon-freighted entity, 'sdbV' (Schools Digital Books).

The s'Cool Tool project was almost certainly masterminded by senior Teachers Group member Kim Hansen.

Curiously, Trayton Systems and its web pages have since disappeared from Trayton's web site - but luckily we kept a copy on file. Here's an image that shows the s'Cool Tool and Trayton partnership:

  Trayton and Google  

Google censors this web site in China

At the request of Simon Lichtenberg, the Google search engine has blanked out part of Humana Alert. Certain pages on the Internet critical of Trayton - like this one, perhaps - are not found when web surfers in China search 'Trayton' or 'Lichtenberg'.

Web surfers outside China are also not being given the full results when they search Google. For a demonstration, search 'Trayton Simon Lichtenberg'. At the bottom of the page is a message: In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 5 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org.

The censored pages appear to be English translations of the Berlingske Tidende article of 26th March 2006, carried on www.tvindalert.com.

In March 2002, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter disclosed that Trayton was supplying furniture to IKEA. IKEA has since announced that it will cancel its contract with Trayton.

IKEA is doing business with Tvind, 24th March 2002, Dagens Nyheter. In English and in Swedish.

  Who are Mikala Gottlob   and Neils Peter Holst?      

In late 2006, the Trayton Group appointed two non-executive directors, Mikala Gottlob and Neils Peter Holst. (See Trayton website - management)

Both are very hard line members of the Teachers Group.

Gottlob (left) who describes herself as a sociologist and 'educational advisors', is a Tvind Teacher of more than 30 years standing. She is currently trading clothes (and we think certainly for the Teachers Group) in Russia.

Neils Peter Holst (right), based in Gibraltar and a 'business consultant', is also a famous Teachers Group loyalist, and well known to police.

According to witness Britta Junge, it was Neils Peter Holst who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash smuggled back from Angola to Danish bank accounts in the 1980s-90s.

In court actions against this web site, Trayton boss Simon Lichtenberg has tried to prevent our disclosure of the connection between himself, Trayton and the Tvind Teachers Group.

Welcome to the Alice in Wonderland world inside Tvind.

COURT VICTORIES FOR www.tvindalert.com

18th January 2008: Attempts by Trayton boss Simon Lichtenberg to silence www.tvindalert.com have failed in the Danish courts. A verdict in January 2007 by a Copenhagen court in favour of Tvind Alert's right to publish was confirmed at the higher Østre Landsret court in January 2008. Read more about the court cases. To read the full verdicts (in Danish), follow this link.

January 2007 Byretten judgement (in Danish - pdf)

January 2008 Østre Landsret judgement (in Danish - pdf)