More TBI schools have bitten the dust. After the defection of TBI Medan, other TBI franchise schools have closed their doors. After 13 dreadful years of graft and crime-ridden business, the scandalously bad TBI Bekasi has now gone out of business. It joins the long list of closed TBI schools which includes TBI Semarang, TBI Medan, TBI Cengkareng, TBI Sudirman and the old TBI Kelapa Gading.

Even within a language-school chain as second-rate, incompetent and corrupt as TBI (The British Institute), TBI Bekasi distinguished itself as a particularly rotten apple. A series of former teachers contacted this blog and complained of threatening, intimidating and sometimes even criminal practises inside the school. The school’s kingpin, a shady and lecherous figure by the name of Binsar, had earned an especially vile reputation with former employees.

This charlatan, grifter and alleged sex-offender chewed up and spat out a series of victims in his many years running the business. This was a school where personal property of teachers was stolen, where muggings occurred in the car park, where police investigations into sex offences were alleged, where salaries weren’t paid on time or at all, where homeless people were exploited to work as underpaid cleaners and where English kids just out of high school were employed as teachers. We heard, for example, from one teacher who was forced to pay Rp 18 million out of his own pocket when Binsar didn’t get him the promised visa. This was more than 3 months’ wages at the time. Another teacher told us that he was forced to do unpaid overtime. Another said that completely unqualified expats were used as teachers. All of this was coupled with temper tantrums, threats and verbal abuse from the short-tempered and widely despised Binsar.

TBI Bekasi, the worst of a bad bunch in terms of TBI schools, has now gone belly-up. Its vile reputation has finally made business untenable. The TBI name became mud in Bekasi and the school went bust. This language school is now really circling the drain and who knows how long until the next school goes broke. Buyer beware with this company.