Tvind is the informal name of a confederation of private schools, humanitarian organizations, and businesses, founded as an alternative education school in Denmark circa 1970. The organization is controversial in Denmark, where it runs a number of schools primarily for troubled youth. Some former students and employees have described the organization and its controlling body, the Teachers Group, as a political cult. Investigations by journalists and law-enforcement agencies have suggested the presence of an extensive money-laundering network within the group's commercial and non-profit ventures, wherein charitable funds are diverted to private businesses and individuals, including several of the group's leaders. In 2013, several of Tvind's senior members were sentenced in absentia to prison in Denmark for suspected tax evasion and embezzlement, after an earlier acquittal. , the defendants, who are wanted by Interpol, are believed to be hiding in Mexico.
Overview
Following a provision of the Danish constitution that allows any group to form a school and receive government funding, Tvind has founded numerous private schools across Denmark. According to The Copenhagen Post,
Over time, the group's financial dealings grew to encompass various non-profit and commercial enterprises such as African AIDS work, South American plantations and second-hand clothing dealers.
Some former members of the group have made allegations that Tvind is run as an authoritarian cult, controlled by an inner circle known as the "Teachers Group". Its purported leader, Mogens Amdi Petersen, born 9 January 1939 in Tønder, had been in hiding since the 1970s and reappeared in 2002 when apprehended on charges of fraud and tax evasion. , Petersen and a group of the organization's leaders are facing charges of fraud in Denmark.
History
Tvind was founded by Petersen, then a young, radical idealist. Petersen is said to have collected about 40 followers and established a government-funded alternative school system for troubled youth in Denmark.
In 1972 the Tvind base was founded in West Jutland on a plot of farming land called Tvind, where several schools were built as well as a teachers training college. At that time, all of Tvind's schools received public subsidies in accordance with the very liberal education laws in Denmark.
It is located in the countryside near Ulfborg in Western Jutland, Denmark - 12 km from the North Sea.
1970s and 1980s
More 'Tvind Schools' began to emerge and after 25 years more than 30 schools have been established all over Denmark and some abroad. An estimated 40,000 children and adults have attended Tvind Schools since the first school was established in 1970.
Tvind soon became a popular center for youth counter culture in the 1970s and 1980s. The world's largest electricity producing turbine, known as Tvindkraft or Tvind Power, was constructed on the school grounds in Tvind in the mid-1970s in a collaboration between volunteers, teachers and students. In 2008, The European Association for Renewable Energy awarded Tvind the European Solar Prize for education, in recognition of the effort of planning and building the turbine in the 1970s.
Tvindkraft has since supplied the energy needed for the schools in Tvind. The building of Tvindkraft inspired and gave rise to a growing wind turbine industry in Denmark.
Danish government subsidies, Special Act and Danish Supreme Court decision
From 1970 to 1996, the Tvind schools received government financial support and supervision in accordance with Danish laws for private schools. Official support of The Necessary Teacher Training College, Tvind's volunteer training school in Denmark, had ended four years earlier, in 1992.
A Special Act passed in 1996 by the Danish Parliament discontinued the official support beginning January 1, 1997. This act prevented the Tvind schools from receiving such support under the general rules, which they otherwise would have been entitled to.
In 1999, the Danish Supreme Court — in a unanimous, 11 judge ruling — set aside the Special Act on the grounds that it had circumvented the Danish Constitution. The controversial decision was the first time in the history of Denmark's Constitution that the Supreme Court had ever discarded an act as being unconstitutional.
Despite the Court's ruling, the Tvind schools never regained financial support from the Danish government.