Over the past few months, we have argued that with the ousting of TBI’s wretched old Director, the hapless and useless Ibu Mariam Kartikatrensi, the victory of her main rival, Ibu Nng Anhar, was complete. For many years, the shady yayasan (charity) USG had been the domain of Ibu Ning, while Mariam had thrown her…
At this blog, we have always tried to moderate and conservative in our claims. We have never stated that TBI will go bust on such and such a date; we do not want to indulge in speculation, and there’s no way that anyone outside Head Office can know exactly how bad the finances are. However,…
In this final part of this four part series of posts on TBI’s organizational structure- one which we have shown has been plagued by rent-seeking practices which have sapped the energy and competitiveness of the company from the start- we look at the real reasons for Mariam’s ouster in late 2015. Why was the TBI…
TBI is a company which has now had a lost half-decade or more. Between 2006 and 2010 a large number of new franchise schools opened under the guidance of Retty Setiawan, but in 2010 she was forced out of the company by Luke Preece, an Australian con-man who claims to have a degree in Geology…
“In a dysfunctional society or organization, people acquire wealth via corruption, rent-seeking, and theft. Perhaps they steal it at the point of a sword. Perhaps they acquire wealth through outright corruption. Perhaps they acquire wealth through holding a position in a completely dysfunctional management structure that requires internal politicking rather than actual performance.” That last…
In recent weeks, we have covered the fact that 2015 was the year when Mariam Kartikatresni’s disastrous reign at TBI finally came to an end. After years of disappointing customers, running illegal visa scams, firing people as scapegoats for her own comic incompetence and fighting off attempts from frustrated stakeholders to oust her, her many…
The earliest theme of this blog was corruption and collusion within a small clique at TBI who we dubbed ‘The TBI Mafia’. We identified the core of this group as four or five people: Mariam Kartkatresni, Ashley Platts, Luke Preece, and Luke’s cronies Lilies Agustine and Scott Martin. We documented how these five had constantly…
Those of you who have been following the debate about TBI, you will realize that the official response of TBI to this blog was hot denial. They used their lawyer to demand that we close down this blog or be sued. They contacted Google and Yahoo and said that everything on here was defamatory. There…
After we published the first of our updates on Jakarta TEFL fixture, Mariam Kartikatresni, one regular reader (who is mostly interested in stories on ILC) asked, “Who’s Mariam? What are her crimes?” In a sense that’s a hard one to answer, because Mariam’s crimes/sins/trangressions are so numerous. Where should one start? I suppose we could…
Well, this isn’t the first time we have been here, is it? Stories that Mariam Kartikatresni had resigned / been fired from TBI have been a dime a dozen. Regular readers of this blog will recall that Mariam was deposed as TBI Director in June 2011 and replaced by Pak Toni, the former head of…
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