This is just a little post which will help explain how we discovered that Luke was heavily protected by Mariam and the other USG bigwigs. The key information comes from Atika, who knows how bad they all are, but has decided to lie down with these dogs for the sake of her career. According to the old English proverb, she ought to be careful or she might catch fleas.

In November 2011 Luke lied that Cam was in danger of being deported by Tante Vera, who claimed to be not only a friend of Abdurizal Bakrie (the leader of GOLKAR- the party of the former dictator, Suharto) but also to have powerful connections at the Department of Immigration. Luke warned Cam not to come into the school the next day (because Vera was such a live-wire and was out to get him) and he then put out a fraudulent memo claiming Cameron had resigned. (He later started telling people Cam had been fired, even though the original memo claimed he resigned). He then made a ridiculous miscalculation and told Cam he had forgotten mentioning the risk of deportation the day before. (He had so much on his plate he must have just forgotten it, he claimed.) Realizing that NO ONE without Alzheimer’s Disease forgets that a customer threatened to have a school manager deported after just one day, Cam saw that Luke was lying big time, which started Luke’s whole web of deceit and lies unraveling.

By the next day both Cam and Lipi (a former teacher) were making complaints to HR that Luke had lied over and over again to them. (Luke had been trying to line up Lipi as a possible Actel- in all likelihood to take over some of Cam’s workload once Preece had got rid of him.) Lipi was given paid “gardening leave” on the condition that she just shut up and stop asking awkward questions about Luke. (They wonder why we cottoned onto their schemes, but their behavior was so incredibly guilty during this period. All you had to do was mention that Luke was corrupt and Mariam and HR would look like a deer caught in the headlights.) “Here’s money, just shut up, go away and don’t ask questions about Luke” was Mariam’s attitude.

And then all through December 2011 Luke Preece vanished from Jakarta. Previously he had been in Kuningan every second day (usually talking to Matthew France about his laundry claims, his refusal to teach classes he didn’t like or whether he felt able to wear shoes at the moment. He sometimes didn’t). This was what this TEFL joker thinks that managers do- encouraging teachers to make frivolous complaints against their “enemies” so as to advance their own career. Luke stopped his regular visits to Matthew and he disappeared from the corridors of Kuningan for weeks at a time. What was going on? All the tongues were talking.

It was actually Atika who told us the real reason. She said (by phone) that she had heard on the USG grapevine that Mariam had told Luke, “Not to come to Jakarta until the storm has calmed down.” She told him to lie low until the end of the year so he would not have to answer difficult questions. After Cam and Lipi were paid out and had signed contracts swearing not to discuss Luke’s fraud, he could return in the new year. 

Let’s just stop and unpack exactly what Atika was saying here. She was saying that it was quite widely known in USG that Mariam was giving Luke advice on how to weather out a storm of controversy caused by the consequences of his own fraudulent and unethical conduct. She knew he had fucked up but she was going to cover up his lies- again. Rather than investigating claims of serious misconduct (bordering on criminal fraud) against Luke, she was helping him to get away with it! Interestingly, this is exactly what Mariezka told me to expect. She said everyone in Bandung knew that Head Office always protected Luke despite his history of abuses.

When asked why he had been away in Bandung, Luke Preece told the truth. Just kidding! (No one fell for that, right?) He told everyone at Kuningan that he had been sick, milking the sympathy vote. Apparently the crooked South Aussie told everyone that the stress of Cam’s “baseless” allegations against him had caused him “medical problems”. In short, he never stops lying. He even tries to use his own crimes against others to get sympathy for himself. But the truth is that he just hides behind Mariam’s skirts- he is just the Aussie face of an Indonesian Mafia.