The Man in Miami - 5302 Fisher Island Drive

part 1

from Jyllands-Posten, Denmark, 28th Oct 2001

By ORLA BORG, JAKOB RUBIN and MICHAEL ULVEMAN

 

After 22 years, the whereabouts of Mogens Amdi Petersen, founder of the Danish Tvind empire, have been revealed. He is hiding on a private island off Florida among world-famous artists and multi-billionaires in a 6 million dollar flat.

 

FISHER ISLAND - In a four-poster off Miami, an elderly man awakes.

 

The morning sun breaks through the protective curtains of the bed in the penthouse, situated in a luxury Spanish-style building surrounded by palm trees swaying in the wind.

 

Even if the elderly man has been hiding for 22 years, he feels safe behind the massive security system of the island.

The 62-year-old man is Danish. He reaches out for his glasses lying on the bedside table and puts his feet onto the soft white carpet. One hundred and ninety eight centimetres of lean, sinewy and suntanned mystery are rising.

 

Mogens Amdi Petersen, founder of the Danish Tvind organisation known as Humana in English-speaking countries, is ready for a new day in the Fisher Island paradise. Since the late 1970s his whereabouts have been a puzzle to authorities and Danish and international media.

 

Most people have heard about “Amdi”, but only the chosen few have seen him. The secretive teacher has been hiding on this island for 10 years, while the myths surrounding his person have flourished. From here, he has followed rumours that he be dead, mentally ill or hidden away by Tvind members having seized power.

 

He has followed reports by mentally broken defectors from the inner circles of Tvind on a magic guru by whom they had let themselves be seduced.

 

He has followed reports from Africa and Latin America on Tvind students having been left behind in life-threatening situations left to beg for food in the street.

 

In particular, he has followed the efforts of the police to unravel the Tvind empire’s complicated network of companies in more than 70 countries all over the world.

 

Amdi’s 2001 photo – his first photo published since 1979 – is proof of how far he has come since 30 years ago he and a group of hippies went by bus to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan and founded The Necessary Teacher College (Det Nødvendige Seminarium) and The Travelling Folk High School (Den Rejsende Højskole) in the Jutland town of Ulfborg.

 

At that time, Mogens Amdi Petersen looked like a mild, longhaired, hippie-like rebel who burst into national view for a provocative uprising against the Danish education system and his speeches on solidarity with The Third World.

Today, his look is cold and – to many of his former followers – frightening.

 

According to people knowing him, it is also fascinating – and with an irresistible magnetism.

His superior psyche and intelligence make it easy for him to dominate his surroundings. His supporters admire him, but fear him just as much.

 

Mogens Amdi Petersen himself fears the public – and not only the Danish one.

 

Many perceive him as dangerous. Authorities in major parts of the world took an interest in him years ago.

In his 10th floor penthouse, Amdi may enjoy the fruits of his labour. Money is pouring in from hard-working members of the so-called Teachers’ Group (Lærergruppen), his most fanatic followers that are in charge of the companies of the empire all over the world.

 

Loyalty inside Tvind is impressive. The 400-500 members of The Teachers’ Group have pledged to give up the major part of their salaries and fortunes in the form of for instance inheritances from parents. However, there is more: They have also given the Tvind top brass power over their spare time, family life and sexual life.

 

Only Amdi and a small number of loyal women belonging to the Tvind top brass know the total value of Tvind’s assets. According to conservative estimates, it is several million dollars. The Tvind estates in Miami alone represent a market value of more than 12 million dollars.

 

The estimated worth of Amdi’s domicile, the penthouse at 5302 Fisher Island Drive, is 6 million dollars. The penthouse is by far the most exclusive of the 10 Tvind properties in Miami known by Jyllands-Posten.

 

The fashionable interior decorator Carol Korn, preferred by the Florida jet set, decorated the penthouse. In 1991, it cost Amdi 624,504 dollars to have her decorate it.

 

Mogens Amdi Petersen moved into the 810 square metre large penthouse with a fitness room and outdoor spa fully furnished.

 

Only Amdi and his nearest are allowed entry to the 10th floor flat. A special key is needed to have the lift go all the way up.

 

The entrance hall features a black lattice gate and an atrium with scores of cactuses and tropical plants in large earthenware pots.

 

There are marble floors all over the flat. There is direct access from he entrance hall to the 91 square metre sitting room with a fireplace and a bar in one corner. The room is furnished with a light-coloured sofa set, a piano and vases of flowers. Picture windows looking west allow a perfect view of the downtown Miami skyline a few miles away. At dusk the Sun Trust office building is changed into a pink neon monument rising high into the sky.

 

The flat’s walls, furniture, ceilings and ornamentation are light-coloured. The living room has a cathedral-like vaulted ceiling to improve the monumental look. The flat is constantly cooled by a noiseless airconditioning system. Interior decorator Carol Korn still remembers her meeting in 1991 with the new residents – Mogens Amdi Petersen and his girlfriend, Kirsten Larsen.

 

“They wanted me to leave the interior as it was. The design is luxurious, but kept in a rather subdued, somewhat antique-like style with neutral colours to harmonise with the view of Miami. The flat has beautiful sliding doors towards the roof terraces,” says Carol Korn.

 

Persons having been in the flat during recent years find that the flat is exactly as when Mogens Amdi Petersen and Kirsten Larsen moved in.

Amdi’s large four-poster dominates the 40 square metre large master bedroom. At the foot of the bed is a teak chest of drawers and in one of the corners of the room a chaiselongue. The bedroom opens to a 217 square metre balcony area stretching along the entire flat.

 

All windows of the flat are covered with draped curtains, including the windows in the living room furnished with a square glass dining table and 10 leather-upholstered chairs under a chandelier.

 

There are five bathrooms in the flat, the largest situated next to Mogens Amdi Petersen’s bedroom, and two walk-in closets for “him and her”. The large bedroom has a Jacuzzi and a steam shower.

 

A fauna, which is unusually rich for the area, enhances this idyll. At the foot of Amdi’s penthouse, pelicans keep an eye on fish from poles on the edge of the water. The rare manatee, an endangered sea cow species weighing a ton, gently seeks the warm, stagnant water of the marina, surrounded by flitting bright-coloured coral fish. Dolphins are seen now and then.

 

Since the end of the 1980s, Fisher Island has ranked as one of Miami’s most fashionable addresses. The megalopolis is only a few minutes away, but the island’s nature and calmness give the impression of perfect isolation. It was named “One of the best places to stay in the world” by the Condé Nast traveller magazine in 1998.

 

The island is situated off the southern point of South Miami Beach and can be reached by a private ferry only. People not having any particular business to do on the island are refused entry by several security guards at the mainland terminal near a US Coast Guard station.

 

Security guards in electric patrol cars meet people trying to reach the island in their own boat when they get to the two deep-water marinas of the island – ready to send the intruders back.

 

The islanders themselves pay the ferry service, operating at 15-minute intervals around the clock.

 

ID cards are checked over the radio. Visitors appearing unannounced are unwelcome. Either you live on the island or someone living there has to invite you. The only other possibility of going there is via the fashionable Fisher Island Club hotel, which specially checks its guests before their booking is accepted. A room costs between 300 dollars and 1300 dollars per night – however, the price includes 50 minutes’ massage, free admittance to 18 grass, gravel or hard-surface tennis courts as well as a nine-hole golf course.

 

If one has been invited to the island, the security guards will phone one’s host before allowing one to go on board the ferry, and also register one’s name, time of the day and ID card number.

 

On board the small ferry, leaving one’s car is not allowed. The residents of the island hide behind the toned windows of Jaguar, Mercedes, Rolls Royce or Ferrari cars. A sticker on the windshield signals whether the car belongs on the island.

 

On arrival, an employee will swab car windows and hubcaps to remove any salt-stains while the cars leave the ferry.

A security guard in an electric car will guide visitors to the correct place.

 

Discretion is the key word on Fisher Island. Protecting oneself and one’s fellow residents is a matter of honour and in the interest of everyone. The unwritten code of etiquette dictates that no one is to be unbecomingly curious.

“Remove that camera. Taking pictures is not allowed,” said one guard to Jyllands-Posten’s reporters before arrival at the island.

 

“Fisher Island is a perfect hiding place if one wants to avoid curious people,” says a female resident.

As a case in point, people living on the island working for local residents are ordered not to look at the latter.

For the majority of the 465 families on the island, the residence on Fisher Island is their fourth or fifth home. Only about 20 per cent of the residences are occupied all year round. Businessmen from the megalopolises up north – New York and Chicago – own many of the residences. About 30 per cent of the owners are foreigners.

 

The “emptiness” of the island contributes towards enhancing the feeling of privacy. Very few inhabitants know each other – simply because they are not on the island simultaneously.

 

Even people having flats on the same stairway often know very little about each other.

“Most people here belong to the Smith & Wesson type. That simply means that you defend yourself and mind your own business,” says Seth Nachman, who lives three floors below Mogens Amdi Petersen. He does not know any of the residents of the building. “I did not even know that there is a 10th floor”, he says.

 

Security on Fisher Island is the Alpha and Omega of the status of the island as the resort of celebrities. Without it, TV star Oprah Winfrey, opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, pop icon Ricky Martin, actors Julia Roberts, Robert de Niro and Sylvester Stallone, and a large number of sports stars lead by tennis bigwigs André Agassi and Boris Becker – and many others – would never have gone there. Nor would probably the founder of Samsonite or the Bacardi rum empire heir. According to Jyllands-Posten’s sources, Colombian narcotics kingpins and persons involved with the Russian mafia belong to the clientele of the island.

 

The position of the about one square kilometre island is perfect for its residents. Miami International Airport is only a quarter of an hour away from Fisher Island – after the ferry passage.

 

The island functions as an alternative tropical paradise to those who do not want to fly to for instance the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands or other islands in the Caribbean.

 

For Mogens Amdi Petersen, Fisher Island has functioned perfectly for 10 years. One of the rooms of his flat is furnished as an office with four-five desks each equipped with a computer. The room features the necessary technological equipment for running a worldwide business empire.

 

Many flights daily from Miami to the rest of the world – particularly the Latin-American destinations – more than suit the Tvind leader. The airport offers quick access to the world, and the bosses of Tvind companies in Latin America can easily reach the island to account for their activities.

 

Even if Mogens Amdi Petersen resides at one of the world’s most fashionable addresses, his official paradise is The Third World. The poorest regions of the earth have provided the ground and culture for his Travelling Folk High School and, in particular, for the principal idea behind his empire.

 

The thought of assisting in helping the needy in Asia, Africa and Latin America is the motive of young people from all over the world, who have given up their private property rights in exchange for the Tvind culture and its promises of a new world order.

 

However, the real world is quite different. There is much to indicate that the only one coming close to something resembling paradise is Mogens Amdi Petersen himself and his women in the luxurious fuehrer bunker on Fisher Island.

 

Tvind’s army of rag pickers at the front lead a Spartan life, driven by the joy of a seven-day working week and blind faith in their participating in saving the world.

 

That illusion too is problematic. Jyllands-Posten among others has documented that after visiting various Tvind companies in Latin America several times.

 

One of Tvind’s so-called “humanitarian” projects is situated 6,500 kilometres from Miami in a sparsely populated area in central Brazil. At a plantation twice the size of Isle of Man, owned by Bahia Farming, a Tvind company on Guernsey, members of The Teachers’ Group and 170 hired hands work hard to earn money for Tvind.

 

The heat in O Sertão – the plateau of Central Brazil – is beyond description. Malaria mosquitoes rule here, and for a large part of the year, shortage of water is a serious problem.

 

A handful of Tvind people were sent to this desolate place seven years ago to run a sawmill and a plantation called Floryl, bought by Tvind from the Shell oil company for 7 million dollars at the end of 1994.

 

Quick-growing eucalyptus trees are planted in the area, and after logging, they are processed into chipboards.

Of the purchase money, 2 million dollars derived from The Humanitarian Foundation of Tvind. The means of the foundation are earmarked for humanitarian, research and environmental projects, which are tax exempt in Denmark.

 

Activities at Floryl do not at all resemble charity measures. Hence, Floryl has become a pawn in the investigation by the Danish police into whether it is against the law to use tax-exempt fund means for a purpose like this.

 

For the local Brazilian population, the meeting with Tvind has been painful. There is massive anger, and the locals in the neighbourhood of Floryl have long since turned their backs on the strange, reserved newcomers. The Danes from Floryl are no longer welcome in Posse, the nearest town 50 kilometres away. The shops of the town want to see cash before handing over goods. According to a former manager of Floryl, the Danes have cheated so many times that confidence in them has gone.

 

When Jyllands-Posten visited the place, there was a hostile mood. Tvind paid staff members only part of agreed wages and held them at the plantation 30 days at a time under “slave-like conditions”, as described by the former chief accountant José Valdonio de Morais.

 

“These people do not mind the law, but do what they see fit. The most glaring example of their behaviour is their throwing dismissed employees out violently, keeping their belongings,” explained Otoniel Lopes Sigueira, Posse’s leading lawyer, who for four years represented Tvind in trials concerning the violation of workers’ rights’ laws.

The lawyer, however, ceased co-operating with “the weird Danes” after not even he received his pay.

 

The cheerful Brazilians do not understand the fanatic Danes and their ruthless attitude and anti-social behaviour. The Teachers’ Group that took part in starting Floryl number Thomas Væth, Lars Jensen, Freddy Olsen, Anne Nielsen, Maria Lindenberg and Birgitte Krohn.

 

As it was, the latter turned up again in Miami as an important pawn in the secret life of Mogens Amdi Petersen.

There are several flights daily from Brazil to Miami. Miami is the hub of Latin American air traffic, and American Airlines daily fly from Miami to all countries in the Caribbean, Central and South America and even the smallest nations such as the tiny Caribbean country of Belize.

 

 

Part2