the story of EC Trading

 

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The story of EC Trading

---

An empire built on rags

The collecting of used clothes is one of the most important parts of Tvinds money machine. Under the pretext of development work rags are collected in Europe, the United States and Canada. But does the profit end up in Africa or does it float back into the Teachers Group?

For a period of ten years the Tvind-company EC Trading (fully Textile Transformation EC Trading), based in Amsterdam, was the spin in the clothes trading web. Every year the TG earned ten of millions of dollars through this firm and the biggest part of these millions ended up in the tax haven Jersey instead of Africa

How? It began when the Iron Curtain fell and Eastern Europes borders were opened for trade. As no other the Teachers Group understood this was a big upportunity to earn lots of money. Millions.

EC Trading was founded by an important TG-member, the Dane Flemming Gustaffson. The Humana companies in Europe (UFF, Humana and DAPP) started selling the clothes collected to EC Trading. The company sold the clothes to mostly other Tvind-companies in mainly Eastern Europe. In this way Tvind quickly controlled the trade in second hand clothes in Eastern Europe and was able to keep prices extremely high.

But greediness went to far. A former employee of EC Trading, who asked to remain anonymous, explains that he was ordered to make a computer programme that made it possible to evade tax-obligations easily. The principle was simple: For every delivery of clothes EC Trading made two invoices: one with the real value of the clothes and another one with a much lower value: this invoice was to be shown at the customs office of the country the clothes were to be exported to, thus guaranteeing that the buyer (a Tvind-company or a trade-company) would only have to pay a small amount of import-taxes.

Milllions floated in. The traders in Eastern Europa never knew they were paying the money to companies as Holland House of Holland Trading being based as bankaccounts in Jersey instead of in Amsterdam, as the invoices pretended. Everything went well, untill an anttentive customs officer in Hungary noticed that the value of the clothes was lower than the costs of the truck and driver. An investigation was put up, Dutch tax authorities payed several visits to EC Tradings office, our informant remembers. Documents from the tax investigation office support his story. After they left, I had to destroy every possible evidence of criminal activities, the former employee claims. For two days long I put documents which could serve as proof into a shredder, together with Poul Jrgensen, a member of the Teachers Group.

At that moment Jrgensen was in charge of EC Trading, according to the Chamber of Commerce. When Flemming Gustaffson, who had left to do clothes-trading in Hungary for Tvinds EC Trading, was notified about the problems (Hungarian authorities were looking for him) he and his partner Birgit Dinesen fled from Hungary head over heels to Kenia. Nowadays they are running the successor of EC Trading, the Tvind-company ConMore BV in Maarssen (Holland). Not any authority seems to bother any more

The TG thought it to be too risky to move on with EC Trading and prepared its bankruptcy. This happened in May 2000. Five Tvind-companies, four based on tax haven Jersey, suddenly stopped payments to EC Trading. As they took about eighty percent of the turnover, the bankruptcy was inevitable. The off shore companies, from which several were applying for bankruptcy too, claimed to have no money. But the strange thing was: in the years before they payed two millions dollars in dividend to the mother company on Jersey: Coriander Holdings Ltd. According to the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende this off shore company was in control of Amdi Petersen.

For two years the receiver of EC Trading, J. Rosenberg-Polak, fought to get some money back for a lot of bonafide companies which became a victim of Tvinds mercyless trade-notions. But only after Rosenberg-Polak threatened to call for an investigation into the off shore companies by the British authorities, he succeeded in making an agreement with the TG-companies: they agreed to pay fourty percent of their debts.
Tvind Alert asked Flemming Gustaffson for a reaction. He never bothered to reply to us.

The question is: what has all this got to do with development work and helping the poor in the third world?

---

An empire built on rags

The collecting of used clothes is one of the most important parts of Tvinds money machine. Under the pretext of development work rags are collected in Europe, the United States and Canada. But does the profit end up in Africa or does it float back into the Teachers Group?

For a period of ten years the Tvind-company EC Trading (fully Textile Transformation EC Trading), based in Amsterdam, was the spin in the clothes trading web. Every year the TG earned ten of millions of dollars through this firm and the biggest part of these millions ended up in the tax haven Jersey instead of Africa

How? It began when the Iron Curtain fell and Eastern Europes borders were opened for trade. As no other the Teachers Group understood this was a big upportunity to earn lots of money. Millions.

EC Trading was founded by an important TG-member, the Dane Flemming Gustaffson. The Humana companies in Europe (UFF, Humana and DAPP) started selling the clothes collected to EC Trading. The company sold the clothes to mostly other Tvind-companies in mainly Eastern Europe. In this way Tvind quickly controlled the trade in second hand clothes in Eastern Europe and was able to keep prices extremely high.

But greediness went to far. A former employee of EC Trading, who asked to remain anonymous, explains that he was ordered to make a computer programme that made it possible to evade tax-obligations easily. The principle was simple: For every delivery of clothes EC Trading made two invoices: one with the real value of the clothes and another one with a much lower value: this invoice was to be shown at the customs office of the country the clothes were to be exported to, thus guaranteeing that the buyer (a Tvind-company or a trade-company) would only have to pay a small amount of import-taxes.

Milllions floated in. The traders in Eastern Europa never knew they were paying the money to companies as Holland House of Holland Trading being based as bankaccounts in Jersey instead of in Amsterdam, as the invoices pretended. Everything went well, untill an anttentive customs officer in Hungary noticed that the value of the clothes was lower than the costs of the truck and driver. An investigation was put up, Dutch tax authorities payed several visits to EC Tradings office, our informant remembers. Documents from the tax investigation office support his story. After they left, I had to destroy every possible evidence of criminal activities, the former employee claims. For two days long I put documents which could serve as proof into a shredder, together with Poul Jrgensen, a member of the Teachers Group.

At that moment Jrgensen was in charge of EC Trading, according to the Chamber of Commerce. When Flemming Gustaffson, who had left to do clothes-trading in Hungary for Tvinds EC Trading, was notified about the problems (Hungarian authorities were looking for him) he and his partner Birgit Dinesen fled from Hungary head over heels to Kenia. Nowadays they are running the successor of EC Trading, the Tvind-company ConMore BV in Maarssen (Holland). Not any authority seems to bother any more

The TG thought it to be too risky to move on with EC Trading and prepared its bankruptcy. This happened in May 2000. Five Tvind-companies, four based on tax haven Jersey, suddenly stopped payments to EC Trading. As they took about eighty percent of the turnover, the bankruptcy was inevitable. The off shore companies, from which several were applying for bankruptcy too, claimed to have no money. But the strange thing was: in the years before they payed two millions dollars in dividend to the mother company on Jersey: Coriander Holdings Ltd. According to the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende this off shore company was in control of Amdi Petersen.

For two years the receiver of EC Trading, J. Rosenberg-Polak, fought to get some money back for a lot of bonafide companies which became a victim of Tvinds mercyless trade-notions. But only after Rosenberg-Polak threatened to call for an investigation into the off shore companies by the British authorities, he succeeded in making an agreement with the TG-companies: they agreed to pay fourty percent of their debts.
Tvind Alert asked Flemming Gustaffson for a reaction. He never bothered to reply to us.

The question is: what has all this got to do with development work and helping the poor in the third world?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  

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