Humana People-to-People Alert

  Interviews  

Shortly after the schools were closed, Tvind Alert carried out interviews with key trustees and participants in the events.

Interview with a management consultant. This interview was carried out on condition of anonymity with a management consultant appointed to review the closure in late 1997.

Interview with an independent educationist. This interview was carried out on condition of anonymity with an educationist appointed to the trustees in 1997. "They are the most plausible, most charming, most devious conniving bastards...."

 

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  Press reports 

There were no press reports of the decision to close Humana and the two schools.

Here are the Guardian articles that originally prompted the Charity Commission to act:

Charity fails to account for funding gap on aid

Charity schools 'brainwashed staff'

'They would put capitalist factory owners to shame'

Councils continue sending pupils

Former Tvind pupil tells of falling foul of 'the programme' after a party time of television and sweets

Costs' take 92pc of UK income

 

 

 

 

 

 

  What the Charity Commission said 

Statements by the Charity Commission

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  The Charity Commission investigation 1996-9 

In 1996, following a series of critical articles in the Guardian and Observer newspapers, the British Charity Commission decided to investigate Humana UK.

Its staff visited Humana UK's clothes sorting plants and seven charity shops, as well as two Small Schools in England, Winestead Hall and Red House. They also travelled to Zambia to see for themselves the 'DAPP' projects supposedly financed by the Humana UK charity.

The Commission's fraud investigation team found cause for concern over 'serious financial irregularities' in Humana, the schools and in Zambia. In 1997, the Charity Commission took the highly unusual step of placing Humana UK and the Red House School charities into receivership - it was the first time tough new powers had been used to do this.

The Commission initially adopted a compromise position and tried to work with the organisation's Danish trustees to place Humana and the Schools on sound legal and financial footings. The Danish trustees proved uncooperative. Eventually, the receiver was called back in, all the Danish trustees were sacked, and new, independent boards of trustees were appointed.

Effectively, Humana UK and the schools were closed down. Humana UK's shops closed and it assets were transferred to a new charity, Traid, which is entirely independent of the Teachers Group and still very successful and active today. The two schools were closed. Winestead Hall remains in Teachers Group ownership. Red House school was sold.

Humana swiftly returned to the UK under new guises. The Teachers Group opened clothes recycling enterprise Green World Recycling in April 1998 and Planet Aid UK in October 1998. Both are commercial, non-charity companies. Winestead Hall School has become CICD - the College for International Cooperation and Development. None of these entities is a registered charity.

In March 2007, the Teachers Group turned again to the Charity Commission and registered a new used clothes charity, DAPP UK, part of the Humana group. You can now read the Humana Alert dossier on DAPP UK, and the charity details.

  Humana UK - what they found  

In 1993, the Guardian pointed out that only ten per cent of the money raised by Humana UK actually went to charity.

"Questions have been raised over the charity’s apparently commercial nature. In 1990, the last year for which It has submitted full accounts, it donated under 10 per cent of turnover to aid projects," the paper reported.

The Charity Commission undertook a close investigation of Humana UK, which led to the closure of its shops, clothes charity and schools. Details of what the Commission found have never been officially published.

However, Humana Alert has spoken independently to the investigators, trustees and other parties, and pieced together an account of the Commission's findings. Those sources spoke of 'serious financial impropriety'.

  The clothes charities  

Huge administration costs and big salaries for the leaders

The Charity Commission confirmed that Humana UK's apparent 'administration costs' were unreasonably high - large sums of money were retained by the charity for its own administration rather than being sent abroad.

Money was supposed to benefit Humana's own 'DAPP' projects in Africa. But there was no way to verify how much of the money earmarked for Africa got there, or what it was spent on. Since Humana and DAPP are essentially the same, there was no independent book-keeping.

The investigators also found another striking fact - DAPP's 'project directors' in Africa, mostly Scandinavians and all Teachers Group members, were being 'paid' colossal salaries. Since as Teachers Group members they had undertaken to return their salaries to the common fund, in effect TG was keeping the money.

Finally, investigators visiting Zambia concluded that as well as being poorly conceived, DAPP's projects there were very probably 'double funded' - they might not be paid for by Humana UK at all, but instead financed by other sources, such as other charities, embassies, consulates, grant-making bodies and the UN.

  The schools  

Although the Charity Commission's statement does not go into great detail, we were told there were several grounds for closing the schools - the poor quality of the 'education' on offer, a lack of investment, and an unexplained relationship with a Jersey-registered offshore company.

Winestead and Red House Schools were boarding schools for 'problem' children. English local authorities, who have responsibility for educating children of all backgrounds but often with no facilities of their own, paid hundreds of pounds a week to send misfit children to the schools.

Investigators quickly realised that there was a problem. The staffing, facilities, equipment and physical environment of the schools did not match the vast sums being poured in to them by local authorities. Hardly anything appeared to be spent on upkeep and running costs.

Despite the handsome publicly-funded income, the schools appeared to be run on a shoestring. Some of the staff were volunteers, and many day to day tasks like cooking, cleaning and maintenance were being carried out by the pupils themselves. There should have a been a surplus - but there wasn't. Where did the money go?

Investigators soon established that, like the DAPP project leaders abroad, a few key Teachers Group staff were being paid large salaries, money which was returned to the Teachers Group common fund under the terms of TG membership.

They also found a curious relationship between the school and its landlord, a Jersey-registered company called Argyll Smith. Argyll Smith owned the schools, their land, contents and several boats used by the pupils, and the schools paid rent on them.

The rents charged by Argyll Smith were way above market rates - the schools were paying their landlord a remarkably large sum of money. For months, the schools Danish trustees denied there was anything unusual about this.

But it then emerged that Argyll Smith was a Teachers Group company - an offshore enterorise owned and operated by the same Teachers Group leadership as controlled the schools themselves. Very little was being spent on the schools, but the Teachers Group was paying itself handsomely.

  Conclusion - the money     machine   

In the light of what we now know, following the Teachers Group trial of 2003-6, we can see a pattern to Teachers Group enterprises across the world - and the Humana UK example is absolutely classic.

It looks like as much money as possible was returned to Teachers Group coffers - where, during the 1990s when the Teachers Group was beginning to expand worldwide as a commercial enterprise, it may quite possibly have been used to finance the Teacher's Group's property portfolio in central and south America, and its business expansion across the world.

 

 

 

Mikala Gottlob

Non-executive director of the Trayton Group, Shanghai, China.

Helle Lund - Manager, Gaia second-hand clothes, Chicago, a Teachers Group company

Jytte Nielsen - Manager, Humana used clothes in Holland, Austria, Sweden and Spain

Jesper Wohlert - Manager, Humana used clothes, Spain

Lise-Lotte Sørensen - Humana HQ, Zimbabwe

Hanne Hansen - Went on to become a member of council of management, CICD

Steen Thomsen - Left the Teachers Group, now teaching in western Denmark

Øyvind Wistrom - Probably left the Teachers group and become police witness.

Steen Conradsen - at the Tvind School Centre in Ulfborg, Denmark

Ellen Moeller, Agnes Steffensen, Carl Petter Nielsen, Else Kragholm Nielsen - no recent information

  Where are they now?  

Ten years on, where are the directors of trustees who once ran Humana and Red House?

Here is the most recent information we have about some of them

 

 

 

 

 

 

  The two charities  

  Humana UK Ltd  

Charity details >>>>

Humana charity shops, hundreds of bins branded HUMANA for used clothes collection.

1987-98. Mikala Gottlob, Helle Lund, Ellen Moeller and others

  The Small School at Red House Ltd  

Winestead Hall School, near Hull

Red House School, Buxton, Norfolk.

To 1998. Hanne Hansen, Jytte Nielsen, Steen Conradsen, Agnes Steffensen, Lise-Lotte Soerensen, Mikala Gottlob ('school adviser', Oeyvind Wistroem,, Jesper Wohlert, Carl Petter Nielsen, Else Kragholm Nielsen, Steen Thomsen (head teacher, Winestead), Lena Eriksson (head teacher, Red House), Karen Barsoe and others.

 

  The schools  

  Winestead Hall School  

[pic] A converted hospital building at Patrington, near Hull, UK. This operated as the Tvind-run Winestead Hall School for around ten years until its closure in 1999. Today it the CICD - the College of International Cooperation and Development, another Teachers Group enterprise for over-16s.

 

  Red House School  

[pic] A school building near Buxton, Norfolk until its closure in 1999. The property has now been sold.

 

  Steen Thomsen's story  

[pic] The last headmaster of Winestead Hall School when it came under investigation by the Charity Commission in 1996-8. Steen Thomsen had been educated as a Tvind student and a member of the Teachers Group since 1974. After questioning by the police and Charity Commission officials, Thomsen decided to defect from the Teachers Group and become a whistleblower.

In a long and detailed report to the Danish education ministry, reproduced here (pdf file) he described his life in Tvind and described the Teachers group as a cult. In one section of the document, he alleged that the Teachers Group used fraud and tax dodges to milk the small schools of money for its own purpises - 'the English money machine'.

Steen Thomsen's report >>>>