EMOTIONAL scenes erupted outside a Perth language school today after it closed unexpectedly due to financial problems.
Dozens of foreign students, who have already paid thousands of dollars for courses, were still arriving for night English classes at St Mark’s International College in Perth tonight.
The school is one of eight language schools across Australia, owned by the GEOS group, that went into voluntary administration this afternoon.
About 2300 foreign students are currently enrolled across the nation, facing an uncertain future.
Some students could be forced to return home if the terms of their visas have been breached because they are unable to take part in full-time study.
Justin Walsh and Adam Nikitins of Ernst & Young have been appointed administrators to nine companies operating the schools in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Cairns. They have about 390 employees and international students from a number of different countries.
“The financial position of the companies is such that the directors appointed voluntary administrators,” Mr Walsh and Mr Nikitins said in a statement on Friday.
“School operations have been temporarily suspended while the financial situation of the companies and ability to fund future operations of the schools is assessed over the next few days.”
The companies under administration are GEOS Melbourne Pty Ltd, GEOS Adelaide Pty Ltd, GEOS Sydney Pty Ltd, GEOS Cairns Pty Ltd, GEOS Gold Coast Pty Ltd, GEOS Perth Pty Ltd, GEOS Brisbane Pty Ltd, GEOS Management Services Pty Ltd and GEOS National English Academy Pty Ltd.
The administrators said a decision on future operations should be known by the close of business on Monday, February 1. Students have been told to return for a meeting at 2pm.
“Employees, students and creditors will be advised as soon as possible,” the administrators said.
One student said she had paid $3000 for a three-month English course, while another stood to lose $11,000 for a 12-month course.
Students huddled together outside the college tonight, unsure of what the future held for them.
Eikaiwa
Eight English language schools in limbo
Eight English language schools operated in Australia by the GEOS group have gone into voluntary administration, leaving about 2300 foreign students unsure of their future.
Justin Walsh and Adam Nikitins of Ernst & Young have been appointed administrators to nine companies operating the schools in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Cairns.
They have about 390 employees and international students from a number of different countries.
“The financial position of the companies is such that the directors appointed voluntary administrators,” Mr Walsh and Mr Nikitins said in a statement on Friday.
“School operations have been temporarily suspended while the financial situation of the companies and ability to fund future operations of the schools is assessed over the next few days.”
The companies under administration are: GEOS Melbourne Pty Ltd, GEOS Adelaide Pty Ltd, GEOS Sydney Pty Ltd, GEOS Cairns Pty Ltd, GEOS Gold Coast Pty Ltd, GEOS Perth Pty Ltd, GEOS Brisbane Pty Ltd, GEOS Management Services Pty Ltd and GEOS National English Academy Pty Ltd.
The administrators said a better understanding of the financial situation and a decision on future operations should be known by the close of business on February 1.
“Employees, students and creditors will be advised as soon as possible,” they said.
Administrators called to Perth school
Ernst and Young has been appointed voluntary administrators to private English language school GEOS Perth and eight other affiliated companies, affecting a total of 2,300 students from a number of countries.
Justin Walsh and Adam Nikitins from E&Y will be administrators of the nine companies that operate eight schools in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Cairns, Gold Coast, Brisbane and Perth.
The schools have about 390 employees.
The pair will also be administrators of GEOS Management Services Pty Ltd and GEOS National English Academy Pty Ltd.
“The financial position of the companies is such that the directors appointed voluntary administrators,” E&Y said.
“School operations have been temporarily suspended while the financial situation of the companies and ability to fund future operations of the schools is assessed over the next few days.”
In 2006, GEOS Perth, which at the time was affiliated with St Mark’s International College, was a finalist in the education export category for the WA Industry and Export Awards.
http://www.wabusinessnews.com.au/en-story/1/78178/Administrators-called-to-Perth-school
Human rights in Japan: a top 10 for ’09
They say that human rights advances come in threes: two steps forward and one back.
2009, however, had good news and bad on balance. For me, the top 10 human rights events of the year that affected non-Japanese (NJ) were, in ascending order:
7) ‘Itchy and Scratchy’ (tied)
Accused murderer Tatsuya Ichihashi and convicted embezzler Nozomu Sahashi also got zapped this year. Well, kinda.
Ichihashi spent close to three years on the lam after police in 2007 bungled his capture at his apartment, where the strangled body of English teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker was found. He was finally nabbed in November, but only after intense police and media lobbying by her family (lessons here for the families of fellow murdered NJs Scott Tucker, Matthew Lacey and Honiefaith Kamiosawa) and on the back of a crucial tip from a plastic surgery clinic.
Meanwhile Sahashi, former boss of eikaiwa empire Nova (bankrupted in 2007), was finally sentenced Aug. 27 to a mere 3 1/2 years, despite bilking thousands of customers, staff and NJ teachers.
For Sahashi it’s case closed (pending appeal), but in Ichihashi’s case, his high-powered defense team is already claiming police abuse in jail, and is no doubt preparing to scream “miscarriage of justice” should he get sentenced. Still, given the leniency shown to accused NJ killers Joji Obara and Hiroshi Nozaki, let’s see what the Japanese judiciary comes up with on this coin toss.
6) ‘Newbies’ top ‘oldcomers’
This happened by the end of 2007, but statistics take time to tabulate.
Last March, the press announced that “regular permanent residents” (as in NJ who were born overseas and have stayed long enough to qualify for permanent residency) outnumber “special permanent residents” (the zainichi Japan-born Koreans, Chinese etc. “foreigners” who once comprised the majority of NJ) by 440,000 to 430,000. That’s a total of nearly a million NJ who cannot legally be forced to leave. This, along with Chinese residents now outnumbering Koreans, denotes a sea change in the NJ population, indicating that immigration from outside Japan is proceeding apace.
5) ‘Immigration nation’ ideas
Hidenori Sakanaka, head of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute (www.jipi.gr.jp), is a retired Immigration Bureau mandarin who actually advocates a multicultural Japan — under a proper immigration policy run by an actual immigration ministry.
In 2007, he offered a new framework for deciding between a “Big Japan” (with a vibrant, growing economy thanks to inflows of NJ) and a “Small Japan” (a parsimonious Asian backwater with a relatively monocultural, elderly population).
In 2009, he offered a clearer vision in a bilingual handbook (available free from JIPI) of policies on assimilating NJ and educating Japanese to accept a multiethnic society. I cribbed from it in my last JBC column (Dec 1) and consider it, in a country where government- sponsored think tanks can’t even use the word “immigration” when talking about Japan’s future, long-overdue advice.
4) Chipped cards, juminhyo
Again, 2009 was a year of give and take.
On July 8, the Diet adopted policy for (probably remotely trackable) chips to be placed in new “gaijin cards” (which all NJ must carry 24-7 or risk arrest) for better policing. Then, within the same policy, NJ will be listed on Japan’s residency certificates (juminhyo).
The latter is good news, since it is a long-standing insult to NJ taxpayers that they are not legally “residents,” i.e. not listed with their families (or at all) on a household juminhyo.
However, in a society where citizens are not required to carry any universal ID at all, the policy still feels like one step forward, two steps back.
1) The ‘repatriation bribe’
This, more than anything, demonstrated how the agents of the status quo (again, the bureaucrats) keep public policy xenophobic.
Twenty years ago they drafted policy that brought in cheap NJ labor as “trainees” and “researchers,” then excluded them from labor law protections by not classifying them as “workers.” They also brought in nikkei workers (foreigners of Japanese descent) to “explore their Japanese heritage” (but really to install them, again, as cheap labor to stop Japan’s factories moving overseas).
Then, after the economic tailspin of 2008, on April Fool’s Day of last year the bureaucrats offered the nikkei (not the trainees or researchers, since they didn’t have Japanese blood) a bribe to board a plane home, give up their visas and years of pension contributions, and become some other country’s problem.
This move, above all the others, showed the true intentions of Japanese government policy: Non-Japanese workers, no matter what investments they make here, are by design tethered to temporary, disposable, revolving-door labor conditions, with no acceptable stake or entitlement in Japan’s society.
2 gangsters held over holding of ex-Nova boss
Two members of the Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate were arrested on the spot Monday on suspicion of confining the former president of the failed language school chain Nova Corp. inside a Tokyo hotel, police said.
According to senior police officials, the two men confined Nozomu Sahashi, 58, who has been sentenced to 3-1/2 years’ imprisonment for professional embezzlement, inside a room of a hotel in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, from about 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday.
On the same day at about 3 p.m., investigators rescued Sahashi and arrested the two men. Sahashi, who is currently appealing the ruling, did not suffer any injury.
Yakuza nabbed for confining disgraced ex-president of NOVA in hotel room
Several men including a yakuza member have been arrested for confining the former president of failed English conversation school Nova for several days in a hotel room, police said. The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) arrested several men on Monday, including a member from a gang related to the Yamaguchi-gumi criminal syndicate, on suspicion of confining former Nova President Nozomu Sahashi, 58, in a hotel room in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2009/09/29/20090929p2a00m0na011000c.html
Few answers for language market
Japan’s language-related business sales have been on the decline, falling for the fourth straight in year in fiscal 2008, according to a market research firm.
English-language schools, the largest segment of the language market, admit they are hurting from a decline in adult classes and blame the sluggish economy and the fallout from the Nova Corp. bankruptcy.
Susumu Ikegami [a corporate spokesman for Geos] said the market’s downward trend began about five years ago, although the reason is hard to pinpoint. However, he pointed out that the bankruptcy of Nova Corp. in October 2007 had some impact.
“Nova, which was the largest language school, caused distrust among the public about English-language schools,” he said.
Nova ruling puts spotlight on Japan’s consumer affairs
Nozomu Sahashi, the former president of collapsed English language school operator Nova, was recently handed a three-year six month prison sentence in a ruling at the Osaka District Court.
Sahashi was convicted of embezzlement in the conduct of business, by misappropriating money from an employees’ fund to cover payments for cancelled contracts. Nova had collected some 56 billion yen in advance from around 300,000 students, in one of the biggest cases of consumer damage in Japan’s postwar history.
The former president has no assets, and even if bankruptcy proceeding are undertaken, there appears to be no prospect of students having their lesson fees returned. The fact that relief from the damage cannot be obtained by pursuing the criminal responsibility of the company’s operator is a consumer problem — and a governmental lapse.
If Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which has jurisdiction over the industry, had taken a more serious view of the problem of canceled contracts and had quickly issued an administrative order against Nova, it is possible the damage could have been reduced. However, the ministry, the government body responsible for nurturing industry, was not greatly concerned with the damage caused to consumers and left the problem unaddressed.
The imminent formation of a consumer agency is based on reflection on this kind of problem. The agency is designed to be a kind of consumer administration control tower, intended to aggregate information on consumer problems like fraudulent sales methods and accidents involving common products — such as the carbon monoxide poisonings caused by water heaters produced by Paloma — and solve these issues.
The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan had received complaints from students about Nova’s handling of cancelled contracts, such as its lowering of the amount of lesson fees returned, for more than a decade. In 2002, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government issued an administrative order to the company, but the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry sided with Nova’s claim that cancellation of contracts was made at the convenience of consumers. This effectively gave Nova an official stamp of approval and the company expanded its business while receiving lesson fees in advance without taking profit into consideration.
Later, the company was hit with a succession of lawsuits from students who demanded the return of their lesson fees. In April 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that provisions demanding heavy compensation for terminated contracts are invalid.
Just before the ruling, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry had finally carried out a spot inspection at Nova on suspicion that the company was violating the Specified Commercial Transaction Law. In June 2007, the ministry judged that Nova had violated 18 provisions of the law, which pertain to procedures for cancelled contracts, and issued a business suspension order against the company. The move was an echo of the judicial decision.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20090828p2a00m0na017000c.html
Ex-Nova boss gets 3 1/2 yrs for embezzlement
The former president of failed language school chain Nova Corp. was sentenced Wednesday to 3-1/2 years in prison for professional embezzlement involving misuse of the reserve funds of an employees mutual aid organization.
In the ruling given at the Osaka District Court, presiding Judge Hiroaki Higuchi said Nozomu Sahashi, 57, decided management strategies as the founder of Nova and that there was no room for leniency concerning his use of the reserve funds, which were not operational funds, to improve the firm’s financial situation.
The firm is now undergoing bankruptcy proceedings.
The judge also said, “He had no prospects of repaying the money, and he bore grave criminal responsibility.”
Prosecutors had demanded five years’ imprisonment for Sahashi.
According to the ruling, in July 2007, Sahashi, acting in conspiracy with a 50-year-old Nova executive in charge of finance, had about 320 million yen transferred from the funds to a bank account of a Nova affiliate to be used to refund prepaid tuitions to former students.
In the ruling, the judge said: “The executive [in charge of finance] confirmed in advance with Sahashi that the funds were not operational funds. Sahashi misused the funds knowing that the employees wouldn’t approve.”
He also said: “It’s not unreasonable that he wanted to help Nova survive. He also apologized. But he used the employees’ funds to help the firm out of its management problems. There’s no room for leniency.”
Ex-Nova chief gets prison term
Nozomu Sahashi, founder of bankrupt English language school chain Nova Corp., was sentenced Wednesday to three years and six months in prison for embezzlement.
Presiding Judge Hiroaki Higuchi of the Osaka District Court said there was no room for leniency because Sahashi, 57, diverted money pooled for employee benefits to deal with his company’s crisis.
Sahashi had pleaded innocent.
According to the ruling, Sahashi embezzled 320 million yen from a Nova employee mutual-aid association in July 2007 and used the money in part to refund tuition fees for about students who had terminated contracts.
The company’s board of directors ousted Sahashi as president at an extraordinary meeting in October 2007 over Nova’s deteriorated business performance.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200908270058.html