Tvind Teachers Group: What is the shadowy 'cult' linked to charity that received UK aid?

Former members claim organisation robbed them of earnings, inheritances and savings.
Tom Porter By Tom Porter
August 2, 2016   

Comprising enterprises in China, Africa, Europe and Latin America, the Teacher's Group claims to be a holistic education initiative "providing drug and alcohol-free environment for both youngsters and adults," and supporting a range of ecological projects.

Critics though allege it is a cult, which has defrauded members of millions under its leader, Mogens Amdi Petersen. Along with associates, Petersen is wanted by Interpol on charges of embezzlement and tax evasion, and is believed to be hiding out in a £20 million ($26m) luxury compound on Mexico's Pacific coast.

With allegations that millions of UK government aid has been filtered through the cult via a branch in Malawi, IBTimes UK takes a look at the history of the controversial group.

Radical education network

The group has its roots in the 1960s, and was started by a group of radical young teachers, gaining state funding to start a network of schools across Denmark.

The organisation, headquartered in Tvind, is run along communal lines, with teachers sharing common ideals, living together and pooling their income.

However as the organisation grew, funds were diverted into a growing number of charitable and business concerns, ranging from anti-Aids initiatives in Africa, farming projects in South America and second-hand clothes shops.

In 2001 Danish police raided the organisation's office, and charged Petersen and associates with fraud. After being found not guilty in 2006, they fled abroad.

Links with Dapp Malawi

Among the group's many projects, the Malawian branch of a charity Development Aid from People to People (Dapp Malawi) has received millions in funding from the EU, the UK's Department for International Development (DfID) and Unicef, a BBC and Reveal News investigation has exposed.

Undoubtedly some funds are used for Dapp's educational, health and agriculture projects in Malawi. However, some of the money is funnelled back to the Teachers Group through enforced salary deductions from employees and donations.

Dapp claims the Tvind payments were made voluntarily and denied it "demands contributions from staff for membership of TG, that it pressurises employees to contribute to TG" or that it makes any deduction from salaries other than "per instruction by the individual employee".

However, former member Patrick Goteka told the BBC: "If you write more money to your wife, they will say: 'Cancel this and start again.' People were crying when they were making those budgets. It was just a shame."

Dapp Malawi claims that there are members who are also part of Teachers Group, but "this is a private matter for them, it has nothing to do with donors, whose funds are not applied to TG".

The stories of Dapp employees mirror those of former Tvind member Steen Thomsen, who has testified to the Danish government he was coerced into giving his savings, inheritance and earnings to Tvind after joining in the 1970s.

Another former member, Britta Rasmussen, described Petersen's hypnotic hold over group members.

"It was the eyes," she said, "he would fix you with his stare. He was a very brilliant speaker. He was like a god to us. We stopped reading newspapers. He was our only source of what was going on in the world."

Unicef said it had severed all funding to Dapp Malawi following the exposure of its links to Tvind, and DfID said: "We will not hesitate to act in any situation if wrongdoing is proven."

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tvind-teachers-group-what-shadowy-cult-linked-charity-that-received-uk-aid-1573874

Teachers Group: The cult-like group linked to a charity that gets UK aid

Anna Meisel & Simon Cox
BBC News
2 August 2016

A charity that has been paid millions by the UK government for its work in Africa is under the control of a cult-like organisation, an investigation by the BBC and US partners has revealed. The group's senior leaders - wanted by Interpol - are thought to be holed up in a luxury coastal compound in Mexico.

Patrick Goteka was working for a charity in Zimbabwe when, in 2006, his employer offered him a big break - the chance to transfer to the US.

Goteka, who would be working as a manager in the recycled clothes business, knew the move would mean sacrifices - separating him from his wife and three children. But he says he didn't bank on also having to join a cult-like organisation - the Teachers Group - and surrender a chunk of his monthly salary when he took on his new role.

Goteka thinks back to the conversation he had at the time.

"They said, 'We cannot send someone who is not in the Teachers Group.' So they said: 'You should join.'"

He also remembers being told he would be making a good living.

"We are going to support you when you are sick," they said. "We'll support your family. We'll give you good conditions."

There was no big initiation ceremony. No documentation. They just shook hands and, with that, Goteka had been inducted into the Teachers Group.


Find out more

§ Listen to Malawi's Big Charity Secret at 20:00 on BBC Radio 4, or catch up later on BBC iPlayer radio

§ You can listen to a shorter version for Assignment, on the BBC World Service ,here

§ This story was produced in partnership with Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting - read their stories here and here


The organisation Goteka found himself joining had been set up in Denmark in the early 1970s by a man called Mogens Amdi Petersen.

For years the Teachers Group has run a government-funded alternative school system, but in 2001 the Danish authorities raided its offices and charged Petersen with fraud. Found not guilty in 2006, he and some of his associates immediately left the country, but prosecutors appealed and the group are now wanted by Interpol. It's thought they may have taken refuge in a massive luxury compound, worth an estimated £20m ($26m), on the Pacific coast in Mexico.

This is just one part of the Teachers Group global network, which includes offshore companies and commercial ventures. It is also behind Dapp Malawi - the Malawian branch of a charity, Development Aid from People to People - which employed Goteka after his return from the US.

Dapp runs education, health and agriculture projects in Malawi, and has received tens of millions of pounds in the last decade from Unicef, the EU and the UK's Department for International Development (DfID).

Part of these funds will have been used to pay the charity's staff. But as the experience of Goteka and others reveals, a proportion of the money paid to some staff eventually finds its way to the Teachers Group.

Once in the US, Goteka was introduced to the next stage of the Teachers Group philosophy - the "common economy". This is a fund which all members are expected to contribute to. Goteka says he ended up paying 50% of his salary, much of which he would otherwise have sent back to his family in Zimbabwe.

The organisation calls these payments "voluntary" but Goteka says employees are really left without a choice.

"If you write more money to your wife they will say, 'Cancel this and start again.' People were crying when they were making those budgets. It was just a shame."

Dapp Malawi didn't want to be interviewed and responded to our questions through a British law firm. It says there are Dapp Malawi staff who are members of the TG but says "this is a private matter for them, it has nothing to do with donors, whose funds are not applied to TG".

What is Dapp?

§ Dapp Malawi is part of a global federation of charities called Humana People to People, which has its headquarters in Zimbabwe

§ The organisation has more than 30 different members around the world - there is a Dapp UK, a Dapp Zambia, Humana People to People Brazil, and so on

§ Dapp is one of the major NGOs active in Malawi, providing a range of aid projects from farming to health and education


It's not just money that the Teachers Group demands of its members - but also their spare time.

Christopher Banda is a smiling but earnest young field officer for Dapp in Malawi. He is also a member of the Teachers Group, having joined in 2009 because, he says, "it was like my job security".

"We call ourselves comrades... and we share the private life together," says Banda, referring to what is known in the group as "common time". This is personal time Teachers Group members are required to give up for the benefit of the organisation, for example to help maintaining buildings.

"In the common time we are always together," says Banda. "We only get a chance one weekend a month to visit our family."

It was while running a Dapp project to improve sanitation in villages in Malawi, that Banda raised the alarm about the charity's links with the Teachers Group. The project was being jointly funded by DfID and Unicef - the UN children's charity.

Banned, he says, from talking to donors about the project, he was one of a group of field officers who wrote to Unicef in May this year about a number of concerns, including employees' contributions to the Teacher's Group.

We introduced Banda to Patsy Nakell from Unicef. As she hears his tale she looks increasingly perturbed, before concluding: "I've never seen any such thing in my life before, and I don't understand the logic behind this, it just is bizarre."

She adds that if it's true that some of Banda's Unicef-funded wage was deducted to be sent directly from Dapp to the Teachers Group "then it's unacceptable, it's abhorrent".

The alarm bell sounded by Banda and others has already had an effect, with Unicef pulling all its funding from the Dapp project he was working on in Malawi at the end of June. Unicef is now conducting a full audit of the project and is reviewing other contracts with Dapp in Africa.

Dapp told us: "At no time has Unicef ever raised with Dapp Malawi concerns over deductions from salaries of TG members."

Evidence uncovered by the BBC proves that these contributions are not confined to just a few people, such as Banda and Goteka.

In his small office, Harrison Longwe, an accountant at Dapp in 2014 and 2015, pulls out a laptop and shows me a spreadsheet with the names of more than 700 Dapp employees in Malawi. For a quarter of them there's a column with additional deductions.

"This is what goes to TG [Teachers Group] direct," Longwe explains. "Some would be contributing as high as 30% to the TG."

Of those sending money to the Teachers Group, the average contribution was 25%.

It's astounding when you consider that the average monthly salary in Malawi is just £60 ($80). Few of those employed by Dapp could have easily afforded to part with any of their salary, let alone a quarter of it.

In a statement Dapp denies "that it demands contributions from staff for membership of TG, that it pressurises employees to contribute to TG" or it makes any deduction from salaries other than "per instruction by the individual employee".

While the Teachers Group started in Denmark and is recruiting in Africa, the centre of its orbit now is the luxury coastal compound at San Juan de las Pulgas in Mexico, 150 miles south of Tijuana.





Teachers Group

§ The Teachers Group is the inner circle of a movement known as Tvind, founded by Mogens Amdi Petersen in the early 1970s

§ It is linked with schools and teacher training colleges, charities, and businesses - including plantations in South America

§ Some of the charities in the US and Europe collect second-hand clothes

§ The BBC reported in 2002 that Danish police had estimated Petersen's wealth at £100m






Banda was one of the chosen ones sent there. It is a stunning vision of polished stone and bright white cathedral-like buildings with a futuristic feel. Designed by a renowned Danish architect, it has been described as a combination of Disney World, Club Med and the Taj Mahal.

Banda was ostensibly there for a conference about agriculture, but he says it was nothing of the sort.

"Most of the times we were busy in the class discussing about how we can protect the Teachers Group," he says.

Goteka has also been to the Mexico compound.

"It's quite beautiful, most of the materials are imported, it's just a different type of furniture, beautiful and expensive," he says, recalling his visit.

Like Banda, Goteka met Petersen in Mexico. He knew him personally, because Petersen had hired him to search for his lost dog - for two years - when it went missing in Zimbabwe in 1998. It was afterwards that he started working with Dapp Zimbabwe, and later for Dapp Malawi.

When we meet in Malawi, Goteka takes me to see one of Dapp's teaching colleges, called Amalika.

Like many of the Dapp sites it is remote, lying at the end of a single-track road bordered by towering bluegum trees and dense forest. Goteka was a campus manager at the college, which, he says, was a recruiting ground for the Teachers Group.

"When students are done here they are persuaded how nice TG is so they can join," he says.

It's what happened to a teacher we meet later. He is nervous and will only chat inside our car, where he can't be seen. He joined the Teachers Group three years ago and voluntarily pays contributions out of his government salary.

"You feel a commitment to them, even though you don't know where the money is going," he says.

The TG philosophy is, he says, "Forget about your family - think about Teachers Group."

He adds: "It's like you have sacrificed the whole of your life, 100% in Teachers Group."

Speaking to him one gets a sense of the cult-like nature of the group especially when it comes to dissent.

"It's automatic. You are in a private meeting… and they try to make you to agree to their side."

There is no need for force, he says. "Those people are intelligent. They try to explain to you... so you agree to say, 'Ah, thank you very much. Now I'm agreeing. I didn't understand it.'"

We have discovered that he is one of 90 government teachers in Malawi who are also Teachers Group members - and that Teachers Group has a target to recruit 400 teachers from Dapp's teaching colleges in Malawi.

One of the colleges used as recruiting grounds was built with £2m ($2.6m) from DfID.

We left Patrick at the bus station for his long journey back to his home in Zimbabwe.



He said he hoped the BBC's work would bring change to Dapp.

"I just feel embarrassed, I cannot imagine they [Teachers Group] still exist in our continent and all over the world."

DfID told the BBC: "We will not hesitate to act in any situation if wrongdoing is proven. DfID welcomes any evidence and documentation that the BBC can send us in order to investigate these serious allegations."

We are taking our evidence to DfID and other donors who have the power to investigate further and make sure aid money is all used for the benefit of the people who need it most in Malawi.



http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36940384

UNICEF cuts off funding to nonprofit linked to alleged cult

Reveal | from The Center for Investigative Reporting
By Matt Smith and Amy Walters
August 1, 2016

UNICEF has cut its ties with an organization that coordinates U.S. humanitarian programs in Malawi, following an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting showing that the group diverted money intended to alleviate hunger and disease.

Reveal also uncovered evidence that the organization, Development Aid from People to People Malawi, also known as DAPP, coerced some employees to deposit wages in their bosses’ bank accounts. UNICEF officials highlighted such wage-skimming allegations as particularly disconcerting.

DAPP Malawi had received $920,000 over the past three years from UNICEF – the United Nations Children’s Fund. A spokeswoman said UNICEF ended that relationship by halting funding to the project June 30. By July, UNICEF was conducting a deeper audit of the DAPP programs to determine whether funds were misused.

“The information in the pieces you put out was useful to us, and when we did our most recent spot check, we had a clear picture of what we wanted to look at,” said UNICEF Malawi spokeswoman Angela Travis. “We want to make sure there are no benefits, there are no funds going to the organization.”

THERE’S MORE TO THE STORY

US taxpayers are financing alleged cult through African aid charities

Alleged cult leader plays shell game with US foreign aid

Teachers Group: The cult-like group linked to a charity that gets UK aid

The UNICEF funding came on top of $45 million in funding that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service has allocated for DAPP Malawi projects since 2006. That’s about one-third of the USDA money routed to DAPP’s U.S.-based sister organization Planet Aid, which also raised funds for a DAPP affiliate in Mozambique.

At one farming project in Malawi held up by the organization as a success, Reveal found little evidence the money had reached its intended destination.

In June, a UNICEF representative traveled to Malawi from South Africa to visit a DAPP sanitation project. Patsy Nakell was accompanied by BBC journalists working in partnership with Reveal and Christopher Banda, a DAPP employee.

Banda managed the UNICEF-funded sanitation program meant to provide toilets, washbasins, clotheslines and dish racks and to teach cleanliness aimed at preventing the spread of diarrhea, dysentery and cholera.

DAPP had reported to UNICEF that it had completed the sanitation project in Gilioti village in southern Malawi. But Banda showed Nakell a different story: A supposedly successful project had slipped.

What was supposed to have been a covered latrine was actually a damp, uncovered hole with a few cornstalks propped beside it for privacy. Multiple households shared similar crude toilets, which meant residents often defecated outdoors. A pathway was strewn with human feces surrounded by swarms of flies.

“It tells me that the village has never changed; it is still in the old situation,” Banda said. “There has not been any sanitation message.”

UNICEF had other concerns as well. On May 30, a group of DAPP Malawi workers had written a five-page letter to UNICEF and Malawi newspapers outlining a pattern of exploitation and fraud.

They wrote that money from project budgets did not reach the field. Employees said they had been asked to sign contracts pledging to return portions of their UNICEF-funded salaries to their employers. They also said that by coming forward, they feared “we may either (lose) our jobs some of us may even (lose) our lives.”

Accompanying the letter was an example of a contract they said DAPP project managers were compelled to sign, pledging a portion of their salaries to the Teachers Group, an organization that has been likened to a cult. Previously, Reveal had spoken with more than a dozen current and former DAPP employees who said they were forced to deposit wages into a bank account controlled by Teachers Group overseers.

“They take advantage of employment opportunity scarcity, (and) for this reason we choose to remain silent and keep on suffering inwardly and just watch even when things at the project are not OK,” the letter said. “Please help us.”

Banda added in an interview: “To keep my employment, I had to join the Teachers Group. Since 2009, since a year after I joined, I have been contributing. It is not by free will.”

Nakell, the UNICEF representative, was appalled by the filthy village scene, as well as by the allegations that UNICEF funds meant to pay African staff were diverted.

“I’ve never seen any such thing in my life before, and I don’t understand the logic behind this, and it just is bizarre,” she said.

In a July 27 letter to the BBC, a London law firm representing DAPP denied that employees had been coerced into returning pay to their employer.

“As far as DAPP Malawi is concerned, this is a private matter for them as individuals – just as membership of or donations to churches or other benevolent causes are a matter for the individuals – and has nothing to do with donors,” the letter from Discreet Law said.

The secretive Teachers Group is widely regarded as a cult, led by Danish fugitive Mogens Amdi Petersen, who since 2013 has been listed by Interpol for fleeing charges of embezzlement and tax evasion. Petersen’s followers run a network of humanitarian aid groups, businesses and an offshore financial network that Danish police say was set up to hide assets intended for charity.

Discreet Law defended Petersen’s reputation, however, pointing out that the Teachers Group founder and leader had been acquitted of Danish fraud and tax evasion charges.

The firm did not mention that in 2006, Danish prosecutors appealed the verdicts freeing Petersen and several of his top associates. Petersen and four of the defendants disappeared around the same time. Three years later, the one defendant remaining in Denmark, Poul Jørgensen, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on fraud charges. In 2013, Petersen and his fellow fugitives were sentenced in absentia on fraud and embezzlement charges, and Interpol issued an alert for them.

DAPP’s attorneys sought to distance DAPP Malawi from Petersen and the Teachers Group fraud case, writing that “neither DAPP Malawi nor any of its present or former board members had an involvement in the Danish court case. Mr. Petersen has never held any position in DAPP Malawi.”

However, Maria Darsbo – whom Malawian public records show serving as a DAPP Malawi trustee as well as its secretary – is described in the case against Petersen as having helped carry out a transaction that prosecutors said was meant to skim money from an African anti-AIDS project for Petersen’s personal use.

Seven current and former DAPP managers told Reveal that they were flown to Petersen’s hideout in Mexico to meet the Teachers Group leader and receive instructions from him on how to run DAPP programs. Chiku Malabwe, DAPP Malawi’s former chief purchasing agent, was among them.

The Teachers Group's complex in Mexico is a sprawling, marble-floored combination of Disney World, Club Med and the Taj Mahal. In 2012, the organization released documents suggesting it valued the compound at about $26 million.
The Teachers Group’s complex in Mexico is a sprawling, marble-floored combination of Disney World, Club Med and the Taj Mahal. In 2012, the organization released documents suggesting it valued the compound at about $26 million.
Credit: Courtesy of Enrique Botello

Malabwe said he flew to Mexico three times – in 2007, 2008 and 2013 – to receive orders from Petersen.

“Amdi Petersen, he controls everything. Whatever they do, they do it for Teachers Group, and Petersen controls it,” Malabwe told Reveal. “If they say there’s no connection, it would be, like – that’s a total lie. There’s a big connection: DAPP means Teachers Group.”

In a 2001 FBI document related to extraditing Petersen from the U.S., DAPP, Planet Aid and a third group – Humana People to People – all are described as being part of the Teachers Group network, which diverts funds with “little or no money going to the charities.”

Reveal previously reported that the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service has allocated more than $133 million to Planet Aid since 2004 for aid work in Malawi and Mozambique.

In the spring, as part of its scheduled review of how its funds were used, UNICEF asked to see DAPP payroll records.

“We requested them, and they haven’t been produced, despite the fact we warned them of this investigation some weeks ago,” said Travis, the UNICEF Malawi spokeswoman. “Any organization would report payments to whom and when, and that would be in your payroll statement. Any organization should be able to produce that fairly quickly.”

The USDA has not responded to repeated requests for comment about UNICEF’s decision to halt funding. The agency’s inspector general confirmed that it is aware of Reveal’s findings and still is considering the USDA’s request that it audit the Planet Aid/DAPP grants.

DAPP Malawi and Planet Aid long have been dues-paying members of the Humana People to People network. Reveal requested an interview with Marie Lichtenberg, the director of international partnerships for Planet Aid and Humana People to People and a longtime Teachers Group member. She referred all questions to a public relations consultant.

That consultant, Andrew Rice, issued a denial similar to that of DAPP’s London law firm.

“Planet Aid has no knowledge of the situation you describe between UNICEF and DAPP Malawi nor is Planet Aid involved in any way,” Rice wrote in an email. “It would be inappropriate to give you an interview about something Planet Aid knows nothing about and is not party to.”

Yet records show such connections abound.

Both Planet Aid and DAPP Malawi are listed on the USDA agreements from 2006 and 2009 that allocated $45 million for work in Malawi. Lichtenberg and DAPP Malawi Country Director Lisbeth Thomsen both are identified as “applicants” for those funds.

Documents obtained by Reveal ­­– including Lichtenberg’s personal calendars, emails and memos – show her working with DAPP Malawi leaders to obtain funding, manage relationships with donors and coordinate with the Teachers Group.

UNICEF was among their funding targets.

An August 2013 document titled, “Marie, Charlotte and Lisbeth Partnership Communication Form & Log Book,” is a chart of fundraising activities showing Lichtenberg working with Thomsen and DAPP Malawi Partnership Manager Charlotte Danckert to seek money from UNICEF.

Lichtenberg’s personal calendars from 2000 to 2013 show her meeting on a regular basis with UNICEF officials. And a Feb. 17, 2011, memo titled, “UNICEF Overview,” obtained from Lichtenberg’s personal files, describes UNICEF funding for sanitation projects in Malawi. Lichtenberg’s files show the relationship extended beyond that country as well, noting UNICEF funds were raised for other DAPP programs in Zambia, Congo, Namibia, Angola, India and Guinea-Bissau.