Tvind - Allegations of Organised Criminal Activity and Cult Status (all References in English)

Allegations of Organised Criminal Activity and Cult Status (all References in English)

According to a 2001 case summary by Danish police and Denmark's Public Prosecutor for Serious Economic Crime, the scope of the Tvind Teachers Group had by 1992 "expanded far beyond pure school activities." Such activities were said to include the ownership of Third World fruit plantations, farms, shoe factories, sawmills, aid agencies, used clothing shops as well as the leasing of property, ships and containers.

The organisation has for decades generated considerable controversy worldwide. Numerous media reports as well as investigations by European governments have suggested that the Tvind Teachers Group is run by a political cult involved in financial criminal activities.

In Denmark, Teachers Group leaders have been prosecuted for serious financial crimes, with two convictions in separate trials, in 2006 and 2009 respectively.

Every year, alleged Tvind-run non-profit companies in the United States, Europe and elsewhere receive millions of dollars in governmental and private-sector funding intended for Tvind-related humanitarian programmes in Africa and other areas of the Third World. However, Danish prosecutors have claimed that Tvind members cleverly channelled a portion of funds earmarked for charitable use into purchases of property and luxury items, offshore tax havens and private business investments, all controlled by Tvind's top leaders.

Tvind was founded c. 1970 by Mogens Amdi Petersen, then a young, radical idealist in Denmark. Handsome, charismatic and driven, Petersen is said to have collected about 40 followers and established a government-funded alternative school system for troubled youth in Denmark.

Another type of Tvind institution, the "travelling folk high schools", were created to send teachers and students together to Third World countries with the ambition of improving living standards of the poor. Now collectively known as the "DRH Movement" (Den Rejsende Højskole in Danish), these schools train volunteers for humanitarian work overseas.

Some former DRH Movement students say that even after paying a tuition of several thousand dollars, they were required to spend much of their time trying to raise yet more money by what some of them call begging in the streets. Students also complain that the training they received is not recognised by governments or aid agencies.

In 1977, Tvind members founded the International Humana People to People Movement to oversee several self-described humanitarian aid projects in the Third World. In Scandinavia the group is known as "Ulandshjælp fra Folk til Folk" (UFF).

Headquartered in Zimbabwe, Humana People to People claims on its website to be a "network of non-profit aid organizations in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Latin America, all working in the field of international solidarity, cooperation and development."

But several programmes run by organisations that Humana People to People claims as its members have been criticised by former volunteers as being ineffective, culturally insensitive, environmentally unsustainable and even abusive toward volunteers.

The Danish media began to suspect Tvind of fraud by the late 1970s. Petersen, growing increasingly paranoid and claiming to be a target for the SIS and the CIA, disappeared one day in 1979, not to be seen again for the next 22 years.

The elusive Dane is alleged to have continued to covertly run his organisation from various locations, subverting Tvind's original 'humanitarian' mission to create a lucrative financial web using standard money-laundering techniques. Petersen's network soon became a business empire based on property and used clothes collection.

Tvind has since then grown into a global conglomerate with numerous profit-motivated enterprises reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Its interests range from farming and timber to property, retail clothing and furniture, with businesses in Europe, the United States, Brazil, Belize, Ecuador, Malaysia and China.

Alleged Tvind-run organisations have placed tens of thousands of used clothes collection bins — most of these ostensibly for charitable purposes — throughout the United States and Western Europe. Humana People-to-People's donation bins can be found in many European countries except in Scandinavia, where clothes are collected under the name UFF.

In the UK, clothes collection organisations said to be tied to Tvind include the for-profit companies Green World Recycling and Planet Aid-UK, as well as the charity called Development Aid from People to People UK (DAPP-UK).

Tvind has also been linked to the College for International Co-operation and Development (CICD), located in Hull, East Yorkshire, England. Part of Tvind's "DRH Movement," this residential college advertises widely on the Internet as providing 'training' for young people wishing to volunteer in Africa. However, many former CICD students have complained about poor teaching, low-grade facilities, and being obliged to work long, unpaid hours collecting and sorting used clothes for commercial companies allegedly owned by Tvind. CICD has hundreds of clothes collection boxes across Northern England.

In the United States, the non-profits Planet Aid and Gaia Movement Living Earth Green World Action and the for-profit company USAgain, which have each placed thousands of clothes drop-off bins nationwide, have attracted significant unfavourable publicity over their business practices and alleged affiliation with Tvind. All three companies have denied any wrongdoing or a connection to Tvind, although executives of USAgain have publicly admitted to membership in the Tvind Teachers Group, and Planet Aid has stated that "less than 5%" of the 250 people working with the company belong to the group.

In addition, there are three other alleged Tvind-run clothes collecting groups in the U.S., two of which are DRH Movement schools claiming to train volunteers for related humanitarian projects overseas: Institute for International Cooperation and Development (IICD), with branches located in Williamstown, Massachusetts and in Dowagiac, Michigan. But the IICD schools have elicited numerous complaints from former volunteers, with allegations ranging from low standards of "training," to dire living conditions, unreasonable work hours, bullying and even a "cult-like" atmosphere. Many of these volunteers also claim they were required to beg for money on American city streets and were exploited as free labor benefiting Tvind-owned businesses.

A third DRH Movement school in the U.S. — Campus California, formerly Campus California TG — had been located in Etna, California, but reportedly closed under mysterious circumstances in December, 2009. The organisation has since relocated to Richmond, California, where it has continued with its clothes collection operation in the San Francisco Bay Area, claiming to have placed over 1,000 of its donation bins in that region. Campus California also claims to have placed another 200 bins in Phoenix, Arizona.

In February 2002, FBI agents in the U.S. arrested Amdi Petersen between international flights at Los Angeles International Airport. An arrest warrant on Petersen had been issued in 2000 by the international police agency Interpol. A federal judge extradited the lanky, silver-haired guru to Denmark, where he and his top assistants would face trial for a multimillion-dollar tax fraud and embezzlement scheme.

The highly publicised trial began in March 2003. Three years later, on August 31, 2006, Petersen, Tvind spokesperson Poul Jørgensen, top aids Kirsten Larsen and Ruth Sejerøe-Olsen, former chairperson for Tvind's 'Humanitarian Foundation' Bodil Ross Sørensen, financial director Marlene Gunst, and lawyer Kirsten Fuglsbjerg (aka 'Christie Pipps') were all acquitted of charges. However, another former chairperson of Tvind's 'Humanitarian Foundation,' Sten Byrner, was found guilty of fraud and given a one-year conditional sentence.

The Public Prosecutor in Denmark immediately appealed the verdict to a higher court. However, the appeal is still pending for Petersen and four of the accused, all of whom fled Denmark shortly after being acquitted by the lower court.

Poul Jørgensen, who had remained in Denmark for the appeal trial, was found guilty of tax fraud and embezzlement in January 2009, and sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment. According to Danish prosecutors, Jørgensen diverted millions of dollars earmarked for charitable use into private businesses owned by Tvind leaders.