Humana People-to-People Alert

  Some interesting Teachers Group companies  

Here are profiles of a very small selection of active companies that we know or believe to be associated with the Teachers Group financial network. A fuller list of more than 100 known companies, charities, trusts and offshore accounts is available here.

   Fairbank, Cooper and Lyle  

A massive agro-business handling produce from more than 20 agricultural subsidiaries worldwide. This is the TG company that runs the TG farms, including the so-called Tvind 'slave' plantations in Belize, Brazil and Ecuador. FCL is also believed to be parent company of used-clothes enterprise U'SAgain. A recent merger of three Jersey registered companies, Fairbank Ltd, Cooper Investments and Lyle Enterprise, described by police in the 2001 Danish police report as at the heart of the Teachers Group financial system.

FCL web site (currently being rebuilt)
List of FCL subsidiaries from FCL web site
2001 Danish police report - summary
2001 Danish police report - in full (PDF)
More on Fairbank, Cooper & Lyle (to come)

  Holland House Ltd (Gibraltar)  

Used clothes import-export. More

  Textile Transformation  

This Dutch TG used clothes company went bankrupt owing more than a million dollars in 2000....mostly to other Tvind companies.

The story of Textile Transformation

  Garson and Shaw  

  The Trayton Group (China)  

Computer manufacture, timber and consulting in China run by veteran TG member Simon Lichtenberg. Lichtenberg claims this is not part of Tvind, despite the information published in Danish newspaper articles. Lichtenberg has unsuccessfully attempted legal action against this site.

Trayton website
Article from Danish newspapers
Another article from Denmark
More on Trayton (to come)

  The McCorry Group  

An international timber trading company based in Borneo, run by veteran Teachers Group member Jonas Israel. Israel is a promonent TG supporter who has been an associate of Amdi Petersen for many years and director of many TG companies. We believe the McCorry Group is responsible for buying and exporting wood produced at Floryl (or Fazenda Jatoba), the TG rainforest plantation in Brazil, and probably other Tvind timber enterprises. Together with Simon Lichtenstein of the Trayton Group, Israel has unsuccessfullly attempted legal action against this web site, alleging it unfairly links his company with Tvind. A Danish judge recently disagreed.

McCorry website
Floryl website
More on McCorry Group

  UFF companies in Sweden  

Collecting and selling used clothes in Sweden under the UFF label. Swedish journalists investigated a couple of years ago, and found a confusing family of UFF companies, passing goods and money among themselves and, allegedly, sending money back to the TG in Denmark even though they were supposed to be near-bankrupt. UFF Sweden was warned by Swedish charity regulators to clean up its act. Some UFF companies were closed, but others swiftly sprang up to replace them.

Dagens Nyheter investigation (29/12/01)
Dagens Nyheter article (25/3/2002)

  Food and agriculture  

  Argyll Smith & Co  

Jersey-registered TG company that owns six of the Teachers Group's major properties: Winestead Hall, UK; IICD Massachussetts, IICD Michigan and Campus California TG in the United States; Kwa-Zulu Experimental College, South Africa and the new Las Pulgas complex in Mexico.

There are three subsidiaries, AS Properties registered in Delaware, USA, Argyll Smith Properties of SA (PTY) Ltd, and TG Pacifico in Mexico. All this information is given in a brand new Teachers Group web site, www.argyllsmith.com (created August 2006).

This web site (which is registered in the name of a well known Teachers Group member) makes no mention of Tvind or the Teachers Group. Most of the properties are somewhat disingenuously described in terms such as 'leased out to a boarding school on long term contract' - without mentioning that every single one of them is a Tvind college.

How does the Teachers Group benefit from this structure? Perhaps the example of Argyll Smith in the UK could be an indication. Argyll Smith is the Tvind company that owned Winestead Hall in the UK in 1998 when it was being run by Tvind as a special school for children with behavioural problems, and came under investigation by the British charity commission, police and social services.

The school lost its license and was closed down in 1998. One of the reasons was that accountants for the Charity Commission found evidence of a systematic fraud - the owner, Argyll Smith, was charging its Tvind 'tenants' grossly inflated leases on property and boats. Teachers Group staff at the school did their utmost to hide the fact that both property company and school were part of the same organisation. However it emerged that as a result of this arrangement, very little money was spent by Tvind on the school, but huge amounts were being transferred to Tvind through Argyll Smith, and probably on to other offshore accounts.

Argyll Smith & Co is one of the key Teachers Group financial companies mentioned in the 2001 Danish police report.

2001 Danish police report - summary
2001 Danish police report - in full (PDF)
The story of Winestead Hall (to come)