Workers at African aid program linked to alleged cult sue for back pay

Matt Smith
REVEAL
August 21, 2017

Staff who worked on U.S. foreign aid projects have filed a legal complaint against an African contractor, claiming they were forced to work thousands of hours without pay.

In interviews, the workers described a secret behind the unpaid hours at the contractor, Development Aid from People to People in Malawi, or DAPP: A cult-like organization called the Teachers Group demanded that members attend indoctrination sessions, where they were admonished to pledge their money, time and free will to the orders of the collective.

“They say Teachers Group is your family, and that is the first family I should observe and be together with all my life,” said Andrew Chalamanda, one of the plaintiffs in a complaint filed with Malawi’s Industrial Relations Court.

Chalamanda worked on farm relief and other programs as an employee of DAPP Malawi for six years. He says he is owed 162 days of back pay.

The Teachers Group was founded by Mogens Amdi Petersen in the 1970s in Denmark. It later expanded into Africa and the United States, setting up DAPP and a U.S. affiliate charity, Planet Aid, according to Danish police documents. The network was part of what prosecutors call a global charities fraud scheme. Its alleged leaders, including Petersen, now are wanted by Interpol and were last seen hiding in Mexico.

The DAPP employees behind the legal complaint described U.S.-funded aid projects that were starved of resources and workers whose lives were controlled 365 days a year.

For its investigation published in 2016, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting visited U.S. Department of Agriculture-supported farm sites in southern and central Malawi that Planet Aid had cited as prime examples of successes. Farmers said they had not received the livestock, water pumps, fertilizer, seedlings and other benefits that had been reported to the USDA. Reveal also obtained documents indicating that grant money meant for DAPP projects was routed to organizations outside Malawi controlled by Teachers Group members.

Workers suing for back pay also bolster previous allegations of an illicit scheme to misuse foreign aid funds.

“A lot of the funding … is not used to help the livelihood of poor Malawians. Fifty to 60 percent of the benefits of the Teachers Group are for the owners who are in Mexico,” said Chalamanda, who was among several Malawians who said DAPP took pains to stage foreign aid projects for visiting funders.

Chalamanda’s descriptions echo a 2013 USDA site inspector’s report, which said DAPP projects looked “highly staged.” In 2015, Reveal met a former USDA project manager in Malawi, who detailed how he mocked up farm projects to impress donors.

“It is painful because I have been used; I have been one of the people who have been used to fulfill somebody’s needs to access funds through the organization. I have been the implementer,” Chalamanda said. “They just wanted to use me to stand there so that the owners of the funds would come, and they would see that we were on the ground doing one, two, three things. So I feel bad.”

Kambani Kufandiko, a plaintiff who worked on USDA-funded DAPP projects between 2008 and 2012, said he accumulated 138 unpaid leave days. He said he also oversaw projects that did not benefit from U.S. funds in the way they were supposed to.

“The United States people, I think they should know the Teachers Group has used their money in a way that was not the intended purpose, where they want to help the community, they want to help poor farmers, they want to help Africans. It’s not like that,” Kufandiko said. “They’re helping somebody who is in Mexico building mansions.”

Chalamanda and other plaintiffs said DAPP is controlled by the Teachers Group, a fact borne out by workers’ forced allegiance to the organization’s principle of “common time,” meaning every minute of a member’s activities is dictated by the group.

Weekends and holidays that other Malawian workers might have spent at home with family instead were spent with co-workers and bosses at supposed training sessions.

These meetings actually were Teachers Group indoctrination marathons “used to brainwash the people’s minds,” said Yona Banda, who worked as a manager on USDA farming projects as a DAPP employee. “People are afraid of what will happen tomorrow because they don’t think they can do anything without the Teachers Group. Teachers Group is the mother of DAPP, and workers in DAPP fear that they will suffer if they go out.”

The British government, UNICEF and UNESCO have cut funds to DAPP Malawi since Reveal reported in 2016 that aid programs there were controlled by the Teachers Group.

Planet Aid sued Reveal and two of its reporters in August 2016, alleging a conspiracy to interfere with business relationships. Reveal is contesting the lawsuit and believes it is without merit.

The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, over more than a decade, has allocated more than $133 million for programs run by DAPP and its Mozambique affiliate. The funds were routed through the Teachers Group-linked U.S. charity Planet Aid, which used DAPP as a subcontractor. But despite probes launched recently by the U.S. Department of Justice and USDA inspector general, the USDA has not reported severing ties.

In the complaint, 22 employees say DAPP owes them more than 3,400 days’ worth of back pay. DAPP, in a response filed with the Industrial Relations Court of Malawi, said the charity does not owe back wages because the workers did not submit leave forms and thus forfeited unused days off. A court spokesman told Reveal that the case is scheduled for September.

Plaintiffs, however, told Reveal that they were not instructed to file leave forms to take time off for holidays and weekends. Instead, DAPP staff say they were instructed in Petersen’s “common time” doctrine.

“Common time demands you to be with members 24 hours per day, 365 days per year,” Chalamanda said.

Petersen set up the Teachers Group in 1970s Denmark, eventually running a government-funded alternative school system. Newspaper reports there described how Petersen’s growing organization controlled many aspects of followers’ lives, determining who they should marry, whether they could have children and where they could live. He told followers that they were on the vanguard of a coming world socialist revolution, which they would achieve by adhering to common time and “common economy,” which meant money they earned went into secret Teachers Group accounts, as previously reported by Reveal.

In 2001, Danish fraud investigators raided the school network’s offices and alleged that Petersen oversaw a global fraud and money-laundering operation. It was disguised behind a network of charities that included DAPP and Planet Aid, according to prosecutors’ documents. Acquitted of embezzlement and tax evasion in a regional Danish court in 2006, Petersen and some of his associates quickly left the country. Prosecutors refiled charges in a higher court, and in 2013, Interpol issued a bulletin for their arrest.

On June 23, 2016, Danish television channel DR3 videotaped Petersen, then 77, walking on the Mexican Baja California coast toward an elaborate polished stone-and-glass compound that serves as a Teachers Group headquarters, according to former DAPP employees who have been to the compound.

Chalamanda recalled the humiliation of years succumbing to the Teachers Group’s control to keep his job. He described a meeting during which members were compelled to make an annual pledge to recommit their lives to the Teachers Group. He said one DAPP worker did not show up to the meeting because she was sick and had been admitted to a hospital. So other members went to fetch her.

“I even said in the meeting, ‘It is not fair to drag somebody from the hospital just to come and agree to this,’ ” Chalamanda said. “They replied that it’s Teachers Group culture, it’s what they believe in. If you’re together, it will work perfectly.”

https://www.revealnews.org/article/workers-at-african-aid-program-linked-to-alleged-cult-sue-for-back-pay/

Brazil probes fraud by alleged cult using proof US officials dismissed

Matt Smith
Reveal
March 28, 2017

A reputed Danish cult with connections to charities that have received millions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid is now the target of a Brazilian money laundering investigation.

Brazilian prosecutors are building their case in part on Danish evidence that long has been available to U.S. officials – evidence that indicates that the network of organizations is overseen by Interpol fugitives.

A judge in Brazil ruled Jan. 23 that prosecutors could pursue money laundering charges against three members of the Teachers Group who prosecutors allege had key roles in associated businesses and a charity there.

Danish prosecutors consider the Teachers Group, known there as Tvind, a criminal organization that operates a global charity network as a scheme to steal anti-poverty funds.

“Our intelligence and financial units have tracked it, and yes, the money – at least the money that came to Brazil – can be tracked to Tvind, the Teachers Group,” Brazilian prosecutor André Batista Neves said in an interview with Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. “This group is qualified as an organized criminal group.”

U.S. foreign aid officials have been aware of those allegations for more than a decade but have dismissed them, allocating more than $160 million to organizations that the FBI as well as the Danes have linked to global fraud. Yet in document after document, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Agency for International Development continued to portray Teachers Group-linked charities as U.S. government partners in fighting African starvation, illiteracy and disease.

U.S. foreign aid officials have declined to comment on whether they have taken any measures to limit funding since Reveal published and aired its investigation of the Teachers Group last year. In recent months, the British government, UNICEF and UNESCO have cut or suspended funding to one of these interlinked organizations.

Reveal reported that Mogens Amdi Petersen, the founder and leader of the Teachers Group, years ago fled fraud charges in Denmark connected with allegations that he was behind fake charities in at least 43 countries. Since 2013, Petersen and four Teachers Group associates have been listed by Interpol as among the world’s most wanted fugitives.

The new Brazilian case involves allegations of illicit bank transfers from a Geneva-based U.S. foreign aid subcontractor called the Federation for Associations connected to the International Humana People to People Movement, or FAIHPP, to an organization called Humana People to People Brazil.

Brazilian prosecutors say both FAIHPP and Humana are part of the Teachers Group.

Over more than a decade, the USDA has allocated $133 million to a nonprofit, Planet Aid, for work in Malawi and Mozambique. Planet Aid subcontracts with FAIHPP and has paid it millions of foreign aid dollars. Planet Aid’s latest public filings show its chairman is Mikael Norling, who was also a founding director of FAIHPP. Norling has been an associate of Petersen’s for decades, according to Danish books, newspaper articles and government records.

Reveal provided questions and asked to interview representatives of Planet Aid and Humana People to People. Planet Aid declined an interview, stating, “Planet Aid has not engaged in any illegal or illicit activities.” Planet Aid sued Reveal and two of its reporters in August, alleging a conspiracy to interfere with business relationships. Reveal is contesting the lawsuit and believes it is without merit.

The Brazilian government investigation involves the country’s federal anti-money laundering agency, central bank, tax authority and public prosecutor’s office. It draws on Danish investigations involving 5 million pages of documents seized during 2001 police raids on multiple Teachers Group facilities in Denmark.

For Brazil’s anti-money laundering agency, 2010 bank transfers from FAIHPP to Brazil raised alarms.

In 2015, Brazilian prosecutors obtained international bank transfer data in pursuit of allegations of money laundering involving the Teachers Group network. Delays followed legal challenges from defendants Per Ehlert Knudsen, Lars Jensen and Paulus Gerardus van Dun – Teachers Group members who had been involved in land holding companies and the aid organization Humana People to People Brazil. Prosecutors had uncovered nearly $270,000 in suspicious transfers to Humana People to People Brazil, according to a charging document.

“We have an agency that says, ‘Look, this is the same group. We have reason to believe that this practice of money laundering has happened,’ ” Batista Neves said.

The Brazilian government alleges that between April 1 and Sept. 30, 2010, FAHIPP made a series of bank transfers prosecutors say were designed to escape detection. Prosecutors used the Portuguese term for “pulverized” to describe a series of small transfers, routed through separate banks, which it said were aimed at moving FAIHPP money to its Brazilian affiliate.

A Brazilian judge in January declined a request by attorneys for the three defendants to dismiss money laundering charges and told prosecutors that they could pursue an investigation.

In a 2011 financial statement to USAID, Planet Aid describes sending $742,424 to Humana People to People Brazil in 2008 and 2009. There is no detail on what these funds were used for beyond “Establishment and start of Child Aid Brazil.”

In its 2010 annual report, Planet Aid described sending $391,000 to Brazil for “Child Aid/community development.” The report did not specify who or what organization received the money.

Two years earlier, in a 2008 annual report submitted to USAID, Planet Aid had stated that “Ecuador, Belize and Brazil have joined a long list of countries where the Child Aid program is strengthening poor communities.”

Ecuador, Belize and Brazil also are the sites of the Teachers Group’s main private agriculture businesses, held by offshore subsidiaries of Fairbank Cooper & Lyle Ltd., a Petersen-linked holding company for the Teachers Group’s global properties, according to Danish prosecutors.

Batista Neves said his office used Danish investigative documents to help build a case involving what the case identifies as Teachers Group-related companies registered in the English Channel islands of Jersey and Guernsey and in Brazil. The documents said Brazilian timber plantation Fazenda Jatobá was owned by subsidiaries of the Jersey company Fairbank Cooper & Lyle.

“This web of companies served a single purpose: To hide the origin, nature and ownership of funds with criminal origin, which had been sent to Brazil by the transnational organization called ‘Tvind,’ ” Batista Neves’ charging document said.

FAIHPP founder and Planet Aid chairman Norling had served as an official representative in 1989 and 1990 of a Jersey-based Fairbank Cooper & Lyle subsidiary – Argyll Smith & Co. – according to separate documents obtained by Reveal. Danish prosecutors alleged that Petersen oversaw Fairbank Cooper & Lyle.

According to Knud Haargaard, who led the Danish government’s investigation, Norling during the early 2000s also had authority over projects such as the Fazenda Jatobá plantation.

“When we investigated Tvind, Mikael Norling was head of the Teachers Group’s companies and projects in Northern and Southern America. We’re talking about the ‘Jatoba’ project, Banana production in Belize, clothing collection in USA and much more,” Haargaard said in an email.

Batista Neves said his investigation produced information about bank transfers involving the same organization Haargaard probed during the 1990s and 2000s.

“This money comes to Brazil from these tax havens, and the communication that our financial intelligence unit has received says that the money flowing out of this tax haven came from the Teachers Group,” Batista Neves said.

From the documents Danish investigators seized in 2001, Brazilian prosecutors say they determined that the Teachers Group was using charities as a cover to move money around the world, $25 million of which was used to buy Fazenda Jatobá, the Brazilian charging document said.

A now-defunct web page for Fairbank Cooper & Lyle said the company controlled more than 227,000 acres of Brazilian land under the timber plantation’s holding company, Floresta Jatobá, as of March 2005.

According to the Brazilian prosecutors, Fazenda Jatobá was one of several Teachers Group operations in Brazil, including a company called Big River Melons that was valued in 2007 at about $13 million.

In 2006, Brazilian government records showed Petersen and his girlfriend, Kirsten Larsen, sought visas under the auspices of Big River Melons. Danish prosecutors previously had said in court documents that Brazil was among the countries to which Petersen considered fleeing as he was sought by Danish authorities.

Danish court records contain a Dec. 20, 2000, letter to Petersen and Larsen from associates Marlene Gunst and Ruth Olsen. Like Petersen, Larsen and Gunst were Interpol fugitives as of this month.

The letter was addressed to “KLAP,” the Teachers Group abbreviation for the names of the organization’s royal couple, Larsen and Petersen. Gunst and Olsen requested approval for a plan to place certain Petersen followers on the boards of companies holding property in Brazil. And the memo discusses the possibility of obtaining a visa for Petersen by naming him an employee of Fairbank Cooper & Lyle.

“In order to obtain a residence permit in Brazil, one must partly be on the board, and you must be able to prove any link with the parent Bahia Farming Ltd.,” the 2000 letter says. “KL (Kirsten Larsen) has this connection in order already, because she has been employed by Fairbank, Cooper & Lyle for a long time, and we could also employ AP (Amdi Petersen), if we were to use this option.”

Petersen was spotted in June 2016 by a Danish television crew at a lavish compound on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. Mexican records showed Fairbank Cooper & Lyle as an owner of that property, too, and authorities have not extradited Petersen.

Brazilian prosecutors also are investigating a series of suspicious transfers to Teachers Group-controlled Brazilian companies involving nearly $17 million in proceeds from the partial sale of Fazenda Jatobá land in 2007.

“It is very probable that this money is a continuation of the money laundering that they have done before,” Batista Neves said.

Whistleblowers repeatedly have alerted U.S. foreign aid agencies to Planet Aid’s links to the Teachers Group. But audit reports and internal government emails indicate those agencies are ill equipped to root out, or even identify, fraud.

A highly critical 2011 USAID report cited a sanitation education project by FAIHPP’s Zambia affiliate in which students were barely able to understand instructions to wash their hands after going to the bathroom. It was an example of failed oversight of U.S.-funded aid contractors all over the world, wrote the report’s author, Thomas Dichter. In addition to USDA grants, USAID has granted more than $29 million to FAIHPP affiliates in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Congo and Angola.

U.S. officials typically fail to ask even the most basic questions of grant recipients, and Dichter wonders if that is because “Missions are staffed with people with little experience in technical areas; and/or with little understanding of development itself,” he wrote following a two-year global investigation. “Are they not being asked because bureaucratic imperatives get in the way of such questions?”

Reveal traveled to Malawi in 2015 to visit sites of agricultural projects run by Planet Aid’s contractor there, Development Aid from People to People, or DAPP. The FBI and Danish prosecutors say DAPP also is part of the Teachers Group. Reveal found farmers on projects touted by the organization remained impoverished, struggling to feed their families.

Current and former employees of DAPP told Reveal that foreign aid grant money was routed offshore through FAIHPP via suspicious expenses for expert consulting.

In August, after the BBC in collaboration with Reveal reported that DAPP was secretly run by the Teachers Group, Britain – which had provided about $7 million in funds to DAPP – suspended ties and launched its own inquiry. UNICEF, which had given $920,000, did the same.

https://www.revealnews.org/article/brazil-probes-fraud-by-alleged-cult-using-proof-us-officials-dismissed/

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

Digging up dirt on donation bins

Philadelphia Daily News
Christopher Malo
December 05, 2012

THEY SEEM to be everywhere - outside gas stations, in mall parking lots, or beside a neighborhood minimarket. They are donated-clothing bins, those sturdy steel containers where you drop off used clothing for the needy.

Ever wonder where those old shoes, shirts, belts and coats go? The answers may surprise you.

For starters, many of these bins are not run by charities. And most of the stuff you donate isn't given to needy folks in the region.

And two groups active in the donated-clothing business have been linked to a cultlike Danish organization that has been investigated by the Danish government and Interpol.

There are legitimate nonprofits out there, their bins marked with familiar names: Goodwill, the Salvation Army and the St. Vincent de Paul Society. But, they are in the minority these days.

Many other bins are owned by businesses, which resell the used clothing, usually overseas, and pocket the profit.

One of the largest for-profits is USAgain, which has 10,000 bins in 17 states - including 10 in the Philadelphia area. It collects 60 million pounds of clothing, shoes and other textiles a year.

Another 10,000 bins nationwide are operated by Planet Aid, a charity that says it uses the money it makes to fund aid programs in some African nations.

But Planet Aid has been criticized by watchdogs for its high overhead, as only 30 cents on every dollar goes to its aid program.

None of the clothing gathered by USAgain, Planet Aid and other for-profit operators goes to help needy people in the areas where the clothing is collected.

According to Planet Aid spokeswoman Tammy Sproules, once the clothing is picked up from a donation bin, it gets shipped to one of 14 warehouses throughout the country, including one in Hatboro. And from there?

"Most of the clothing donated to Planet Aid gets sold directly to overseas customers," Sproules explained by email.

USAgain and Planet Aid have been linked to a mysterious Danish group, known variously as the Teachers Group and Tvind.

The group has been the subject of investigations and prosecution by the Danish government, which alleges that it is a multimillion-dollar business masquerading as a humanitarian organization.

The group's leader is Mogens Amdi Petersen, a mysterious figure within the organization. He founded it in 1970, and its original mission was to run alternative schools in Denmark. It later expanded, prosecutors said, into a global business operation.

In 2002, the Danish government brought charges against Petersen and other associates, alleging that Tvind set up phony companies to collect grant money and that upper management embezzled most of it.

Petersen and seven other members of the Teachers Group were tried on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement. Petersen and six others were acquitted. Prosecutors immediately announced they would appeal the verdict to a higher court, but Petersen and the others fled before the courts could take action.

After the trial, questions were raised about links between Planet Aid and Tvind.

The Boston Globe reported that Ester Neltrup, the general manager of Planet Aid, along with members of the group's board, were members of the Teachers Group, but Neltrup denied any ties to Petersen. "He has nothing to do with Planet Aid," Neltrup told the Globe, "and his situation has no consequences for Planet Aid."

Questions also arose about links between Tvind and USAgain.

When a Seattle television station ran stories about the USAgain-Tvind link, Mattiaws Wallander, president and chief executive officer of USAgain, admitted he was a member of the Teachers Group but separated himself from the issues in Denmark.

"We are not associated with any organization in Denmark, and if anyone is accused of wrongdoing in Denmark, it doesn't have anything to do with USAgain," Wallander told a TV reporter.

A version of this story appears on the website Metropolis: phlmetropolis.com



http://articles.philly.com/2012-12-05/news/35597302_1_planet-aid-tvind-usagain

Area man takes on Planet Aid

Richmond Daily News
David Knopf
March 25, 2012


Jerry McCarter is just one man, and one man can’t save the world.

But McCarter said he hopes to help his hometown by ridding it of Planet Aid, a non-profit organization that, for years, has been criticized as a get-rich front for Amdi Petersen, a resident of Denmark.

Planet Aid has at least a half-dozen of its yellow collection boxes in Ray County, a figure McCarter said he wants to reduce – and keep – at zero.

“Everyone donates to them and they don’t have a clue where that stuff’s going,” said McCarter, who has contacted most, if not all, the six property owners to have the boxes removed. “This is a national problem, not just in Ray County.”

McCarter said he’s aware of Planet Aid boxes at Susie’s 10-13 Diner, Four Seasons Siding, House of Hair, The Depot, Richmond Bargain Town and Continental Siding in Richmond, and The Crossroads convenience store in Orrick.

There may be others.

McCarter said that none of the property owners is aware that clothing left in the boxes is ultimately sold with the proceeds filtered through a complicated web of organizations linked – directly or indirectly – to Petersen’s TVind in Denmark.





http://www.richmond-dailynews.com/?p=9847

Remember when: A yacht moored on the Broadwater was linked to a Denmark-based cult leader

Gold Coast Bulletin
November 27, 2004

 

A MULTIMILLION-dollar superyacht moored on the Broadwater was linked to an accused cult leader facing fraud and embezzlement charges in Denmark

Mogens Amdi Petersen was called a hard man to track down.

After all, he once went missing for 22 years.

When he seemed to slip off the face of the Earth in 1979, most people saw Petersen as a throwback to the 1960s — a charismatic do-gooder out to help the Third World.

The Danish teacher espoused Marxist-Leninist principles, set up radical teaching colleges in his homeland and sent young disciples to Africa.

Then, one day, he disappeared.

Despite this, the `charitable’ causes he founded didn’t miss a beat. In fact, they grew stronger — much stronger.

Some people started calling the elusive boss a cult leader.

Others wondered whether the millions of dollars were reaching the right places.

All wanted to know where they could find Mogens.

Petersen had access to luxury homes dotted around the world, had a multimillion-dollar Florida apartment just for his dogs and enjoyed the use of an elegant superyacht. At 40m, it was once the biggest fibreglass luxury vessel in the world.

If you took a stroll to the Broadwater that weekend you could see it for yourself in all its three-masted, teak-inlaid glory.

Named Butterfly McQueen, the Bermuda rigged schooner was previously owned by Tvind offshoot the Teachers Group.

Petersen was acquitted in 2006 but the case was appealed — he remains at large today and as of 2016 was understood to be living underground in Mexico.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/remember-when-a-yacht-moored-on-the-broadwater-was-linked-to-a-denmarkbased-cult-leader/news-story/536ade0a01152a13a518a8f82840ec43