The secret worldwide commercial network The ‘humanitarian’ Teachers Group – led by Mogens Amdi Petersen – earns millions of dollars by looting money out of its so-called non-profit charities. But few donors realise that the Teachers Group also runs a secret network of profitable private enterprises, which do not even pretend to be charitable in any way. Through front companies, it owns and operates used-clothes businesses, brokers, import-export companies, huge agricultural plantations, commodity trading enterprises (bananas, soybean), forestry concessions, sawmills, timber trading, and a furniture factory, just to mention a few. ‘Business’ and ‘humanitarian purpose’ are deliberately mixed, and it is often impossible to separate financial flows, commercial profits from charity cash. Teachers Group followers trained in ‘solidary humanism’ have been deployed to build up and work for the commercial businesses. We have established that the biggest, best-performing businesses are all run by long-established Tvind ‘trusties’ who can be relied on to make the best returns. Volunteers may provide free or cheap labour. Company boards are often stuffed with nominee directors. In the United States, the collection and sale of used clothing is carried out by for-profit companies USAgain and Gaia. With thousands of collection containers throughout the United States, USAgain is a highly profitable business, which says it supports the environment and the Third World. However we have established that many of the garments are sold to intermediary companies, also owned by the Teachers Group – such as, for example, brokers Garson and Shaw. Companies secretly connected to each other use a price-fixing technique called ‘transfer pricing’ to buy cheap and sell dear across international boundaries, to avoid tax and maximise profits in low-tax areas, so that the highest possible profits go to The Teachers Group in offshore holding companies, and not to humanitarian work. In the UK, Teachers Group companies include a business trading in African sculpture, Friends Forever, as well as two used-clothes companies, Planet Aid and Green World. In Africa, a business called China-Africa Trade Link is expanding a chain of furniture and office supplies shops. The Teachers Group’s biggest commercial money-spinners must be in agriculture, forestry, wood trading and furniture, all of which can be mixed with ‘foreign development’. In Belize, Ecuador, and the Caribbean, the organisation owns enormous banana and fruit plantations run through an offshore Cayman Islands company, which supply supermarkets throughout the world. A huge timber plantation in Brazil, bought for more than $6 million, is the crown in the Teachers Group’s commercial property portfolio. A Teachers Group-linked timber company in Malaysia, McCorry and Co, runs forestry concessions, sawmills and sells timber to western manufacturers, while in China, a large private corporation, the Trayton Group, produces furniture and sofas in Shanghai. Its manager, Simon Lichtenberg, makes large annual donations to the Teachers Group and is reputed to be lined up as the group’s next ‘Chief Executive’, in succession to Amdi Petersen.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:44:22 +0000
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