We can now confirm that TBI Semarang has shut its doors and gone bankrupt. This is the second TBI school which has closed down within the last two months, exposing the current management mafia as inept, clueless and directionless. It is a particular slap in the face for Luke Preece, who campaigned ruthlessly in 2010 to get the previous Head of Franchise, Retty Setiawan, fired. He got her forced out on the premise that he would develop TBI so much better than she ever did. Instead, he is running the whole brand into the ground. Since he took over franchise, two franchise schools- TBI Cengkareng and now TBI Semarang- have gone bankrupt. Rather than developing the TBI brand, he has sent it into rapid decline. As we have long said, Preece is nothing but a liability for TBI.

We informed readers last August that this school had been terribly damaged by the unethical and misleading behaviour of Retty, Mariam and Ashley. All three of them are shown on stage at the TBI Semarang Grand Opening, just 4 years ago. The school was doomed from the start by the decision of Retty, Ashley and Mariam to recommend Helmy V. as the School Manager. In a gross piece of nepotism, Helmy was Retty’s relative- a fact which was not conveyed to the owners. Helmy V. then went on to embezzle the marketing budget to the value of Rp 75.000.000 and sexually harrass 5 young women, bringing the whole school to a standstill for over a month while Helmy was investigated. Furthermore, he gave away large numbers of courses at well below cost, showing complete financial ignorance and placing a huge drain on the school’s resources. The franchise owners had placed a huge amount of trust in TBI- investing well over a billion rupiah in the TBI brand- and Mariam and her crooked crew treated this man with contempt, sending them a man of questionable character and poor business sense who looted the school and sexually bullied his way around the office. (They might claim they had no idea that Helmy was more gangster than manager material, but they scandalously recommended him to TBI Kelapa Gading’s owners the following year, without disclosing his crimes in Semarang. This proves that they hold their supposed business partners in nothing but contempt.)

TBI might try and blame us for this debacle, but the TBI franchise owners blamed Head Office. By 2011, well before this blog ever started, the school was down to well below 100 enrolled students and was a loss-making enterprise. The writing was long on the wall. By 2011 the school owner had told his staff not even to allow Luke Preece into the building for his audit. It shows the arrogance of Mariam, Luke and Ashley that they think a businessman would want the ‘advice’ of a Head Office which had inflicted Helmy V. on Semarang and then Kelapa Gading without even admitting that they knew he was a thief and sex offender. They are as clueless as they are corrupt.