Jessica Crichton, 23, and Hilary Keyes, 24, former teachers of failed language school chain Nova Corp., sat on the floor of their shared apartment in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, eating bowls of instant ramen–their first and only meal of the day.
“I can’t tell my mom in Canada about this situation,” Crichton said with tears in her eyes. After all, she came to Japan, she said, because she loves the country and its people.
About 4,000 teachers lost their jobs after Osaka-based Nova filed for court protection from creditors under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law on Oct. 26. The two were told on Oct. 11. to leave the apartment the firm rented for them. They moved to their new place on Oct. 20.
“Many former Nova teachers are being driven out of their apartments and are living in dire conditions,” an official of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo South Chapter said.
Nova teachers usually lived together in groups of two or three in shared apartments rented by the firm. Osaka resident Nik Shepherd, who came to Japan a year and half ago, is one of them. He lived together with two colleagues. Monthly rent of 53,000 yen was withheld from the salary of each. Currently, although the firm has failed to pay the rent, the landlord has been kind enough to allow the tenants to stay in the apartment.
“We’ve stopped eating out. We can cook at home for 200 yen per meal,” 26-year-old Shepherd said. He lives on his meager earnings from private English lessons.
“I was disappointed with [former Nova President Nozomu] Sahashi, but I love Japan,” Crichton said. She said she sometimes gets absorbed reading “Ugetsu Monogatari,” an anthology of 18th century ghost stories that one of her students introduced her to. Shepherd said he was eager to learn more about Japanese culture, such as ukiyo-e woodblock art.
Although the takeover of part of the Nova’s operations by a Nagoya-based firm has been decided, the future still looks cloudy for the former Nova teachers.
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Students sore over tuition fees
Many Nova students expressed resentment Tuesday upon learning their tuition fees will not likely be returned after G.communication Group, a Nagoya-based language school chain operator, takes over some of the failed language school chain’s branches.
G.communication announced Tuesday it would not assume an obligation to return tuition fees paid by about 300,000 students to Nova.
During a press conference Tuesday night, Nova’s court-appointed administrators Toshiaki Higashibata and Noriaki Takahashi, who are lawyers, announced that G.communication was selected to take over part of Nova’s operations.
“The decision [taken by G.communication] will highly protect employees and students. I had the impression that the company was very generous,” Takahashi said.
G.communication will resume operation of 30 Nova schools at an early date. As for operations at about 640 remaining schools, the administrators are in the process of selecting schools to reopen, but could not say when they would make an announcement on the matter.
Meanwhile, G.communication President Takashi Ono said during the press conference that the school would accept all Nova employees who wish to work.
The company said it plans to do its best to support Nova students.
Tuesday’s announcement on the tuition fees had an impact on Nova’s students.
An 18-year-old college student who went to Nova’s Kichijoji school in Musashino, Tokyo, said she paid 900,000 yen in advance to Nova about two years ago, and that about 200,000 yen remained unused for lessons.
“I wonder whether I can take lessons or not if I pay additional tuition fees. I can’t believe [what] an English language school [says] anymore,” she said.
A 32-year-old female boutique employee said she attended the Meguro school in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, for 12 years. When she heard only 30 schools would be reopened for the time being, she hardened her face and said, “What will happen to the [Meguro] school? If the schools [to be resumed] are located far from my house, it will be hard to continue studying while working.”
A female company employee, 66, who attended the Ochanomizu school in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, said her advance payment of 315,000 yen for lessons remained unused.
News
Japan English teachers’ hopes fall with Nova
About 750,000 Japanese paid for evening and weekend language lessons last year, nearly two-thirds of them through Nova.
Teaching English in Japan, a popular first job for western university graduates, has become dicier proposition. Nova, the dominant force in Japan’s $1.2bn-a-year private language-teaching business, has filed for court protection from creditors after scandals and lawsuits drove away tens of thousands of students.
The company, which is Y44bn (?266m) in debt, had closed dozens of its 900 schools and missed salary payments to some 4,000 instructors from the UK, the US, Canada and Australia.
Critics blame an aggressive expansion campaign by Nozomu Sahashi, founder and chief executive, for overstretching Nova’s resources. Mr Sahashi was fired by the board of the publicly listed company.
About 750,000 Japanese paid for evening and weekend language lessons last year, nearly two-thirds of them through Nova. Mr Sahashi founded the company in 1981 after returning from studying in Paris. The chain’s bright blue signs are ubiquitous around urban train stations, which sometimes sport a Nova outlet at more than one exit.
Nova has reported a net loss in each of the past two years and has been struggling under a government ban. The recruiting of new students by Nova was prohibited in response to claims that it had failed to disclose a chronic shortage of lesson spaces. Courts have also ordered Nova to refund millions of yen in pre-paid fees that the company claimed had been forfeited by dropouts.
A court-appointed receiver will assess the company’s assets and seek financial sponsors to help turn the company round. Failing that, the chain could be sold or liquidated.
Paul Dorey, an official at a union that represents some Nova instructors, said: “It’s been a vicious circle for a while. They couldn’t find enough teachers, so students couldn’t book lessons at peak times and would quit.”
He said foreign staff risked losing company-sponsored housing after Nova stopped paying their rent. “Some teachers have already received eviction notices. It’s a total mess.”
Nova and other English schools fill a gap left by Japan’s education system, which does a notoriously poor job of training students to speak the language.
Only nine of 147 countries ranked lower than Japan last year in average scores on the widely used English language proficiency test run by the Educational Testing Service of the US.
http://www.ftd.de/karriere_management/business_english/275232.html
Nova faces liquidation after sale
No refunds offered in partial deal
Nova Corp.’s court-appointed administrators plan to sell 30 of the failed language school chain’s 670 branches to G.communication grp. and liquidate the rest, making tuition refunds very unlikely.
Nagoya-based G.communication, which also runs cram schools and restaurants, said the takeover would happen immediately with an eye to resuming lessons and eventually running as many as 200 of the bankrupt Osaka-based chain’s schools. It reportedly plans to accept paid-up Nova students and offer them classes at a discounted price.
“Our company has been unofficially selected to become a sponsor in order to fund Nova’s operations,” G.communication said in a press release late Tuesday without specifying details of the deal, which was announced before it could be approved by the Osaka District Court.
According to the statement, the schools would be taken over by G.communication’s wholly owned subsidiary, G.education Co., which runs 42 English conversation schools under the EC Inc. brand mainly in Hokkaido. It will initially take over 30 of Nova’s schools but reportedly plans to run about 200 Nova branches under their original brand.
Nova’s court-appointed administrators had been under pressure to find a sponsor quickly to assume some of its previously estimated ¥43.9 billion in debt, including¥4 billion in unpaid salaries.
One of the administrators said a deal had to be made quickly because Nova’s corporate value was plummeting. Under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law, revised in 2003, a failed firm can sell its operations on the basis of brief court permission, even if its reconstruction program has not been approved.
As for the at least ¥4 billion in salaries owed to Nova’s 7,000 employees, including some 4,000 foreign teachers, some of whom haven’t been paid since August, Nova has said it will pay part of the money owed by using government money. But how much each teacher will get and when are causes of concern, said Koji Yamahara of the Osaka-based General Union, which represents some Nova workers.
“The unpaid salaries will come from public funds. But there is a maximum payout limit and it will take at least six months for Nova staff to get even a portion of their back wages,” he said. “Many staff members are now hurting financially. They should receive immediate payment of what they are owed.”
The General Union is warning of further trouble and chaos unless the new sponsor quickly clarifies how it will deal with the unpaid wages.
But the decision to offer a discount to Nova’s students instead of refunds was criticized by the union, which said it will pursue the case in court.
“The decision (by G.communication) not to return any money to Nova’s students is cruel,” Yamahara said. “The union will continue negotiations on this matter with the court and the government.”
One of the administrators said the Nova failure is likely to go down as the one that caused the most financial damage to “the largest number of creditors,” in postwar Japan.
G.communication has agreed to allow Nova’s students to buy the same kind of lessons they were taking at Nova for about 25 percent of what they paid there.
Dennis Tesolat, the General Union’s general secretary, said the details about re-employing Nova teachers also needs to be clarified.
“Both G.communication and Nova’s court-appointed lawyers have said that all of those who want to be re-employed will be. But how are they going to ensure this happens and under what conditions will the teachers be employed? This remains unclear,” Tesolat said.
But Jamie Scarrabelotti, who used to work at a Nova multimedia center in Osaka, said most Nova staff he knows were skeptical about the prospects of finding new employment and getting their wages paid. “We’ll try to get our owed wages, but, frankly, I don’t think many Nova teachers expect to get fully reimbursed,” he said.
On Oct. 26, Nova filed for protection from creditors and completely shut down operations, putting nearly 7,000 employees out of work and leaving nearly 300,000 students in limbo.
In Tokyo, Toby Gummer, a Nova teacher who visited a public job security office, said the bankruptcy announcement should have come earlier.
“They knew they didn’t have money several months ago. They should’ve declared bankruptcy then,” said Gummer, an Aussie who taught English for more than three years for Nova in the Akasaka district.
He said many Nova teachers are in financial difficulty and have started thinking about going back to their home country, including himself.
“I think I have to go home next week,” he added.
NZ teacher $8000 out of pocket after collapse of language school
A New Zealander in Japan was forced to dip into his savings and move house after a “tightening up on photocopy paper and lightbulbs” tipped him off that the country’s largest chain of English language schools was in financial trouble.
Cole Cameron, who moved to Japan 18 months ago to work for Nova, said he had to find a new job and was $8000 out of pocket following the collapse of his former employer.
The 23-year-old, originally from Havelock North, is one of about 200 New Zealanders affected by last week’s collapse, with many left stranded and owed money.
Mr Cameron told the Herald from Saitama Prefecture that he had managed thanks to “conservative financial management”, savings and backing from his parents in New Zealand should he need it.
He said the situation at Nova had been noticeably deteriorating for the past five months, since he first noticed tighter measures on stationery.
Employees who had accommodation arranged through Nova started experiencing problems shortly afterwards.
“Rental fees weren’t being paid even though they were deducted from the salaries. Our salary paper said we’d paid the rent but it hadn’t been passed on to the landlord.”
Mr Cameron was in Nova accommodation, but saw a risk and moved into his own accommodation. He said different levels of staff were affected at different times.
“The bulk of the regular instructors were the last to have their contracts breached,” he said.
“It started off with the Japanese staff having their contracts breached in August by failure of payment, then the management, which included foreigners and Japanese, had their contracts breached in September where their salary was two weeks late.
“And then everybody had their contracts breached in October with failure of payment and we haven’t been paid yet.”
But despite being owed $8000, Mr Cameron said he would not let it ruin his stay.
“My personal view is you can’t sit around and cry over spilt milk. You’ve just got to get on with it, and I’ve been fortunate in the sense I took that attitude a long time ago and went and got another job.
“Some people only got that attitude over the weekend and have found there’s nothing there. It’s a difficult situation all round.”
He started a new job teaching English this week, but it’s been tough financially.
“There’s obviously still that gap of two months’ salary [plus owed leave]. I’m getting through, but essentially I need that two months’ salary.”
Mr Cameron, whose last day at Nova was October 25, said it was possible he would get some of his money back because Nova salaries were government insured, but he wasn’t holding his breath.
“This situation highlights the importance of careful planning and risk management for anybody travelling overseas.”
He said one of the most annoying things was the lack of information about what was going on.
“A lot of the Western folk jumped ship the day after we weren’t paid and some of them have just left the country and the company is none the wiser.”
The New Zealand Embassy in Tokyo said it received a steady stream of calls from New Zealanders caught up in the situation, and was offering advice, but not financial assistance.
Last Friday, Nova dismissed co-founder Nozomu Sahashi and filed for protection from creditors with the Osaka District Court. Its debts are estimated to be 43.9 billion yen ($500 million)
The company was founded in 1981 and relentlessly expanded, working towards its goal of 1000 schools nationwide.
Nova had 300,000 students at about 670 schools. It employed about 7000 staff, around 4900 of whom were foreigners.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10474346
Nova fall just simple math: it bled red
MISMANAGEMENT IN DEFIANCE OF MARKET REALITY
A 330-sq.-meter office with a double bed, sauna and tea room was where Nozomu Sahashi, ousted president of Nova Corp., worked as the language school chain steadily teetered near bankruptcy over the past few years.
Unveiled to the media last week, the spacious presidential suite on the 20th floor of Nova’s head office in Osaka cost the company ¥2.7 million a month to rent and about ¥70 million to redecorate.
The posh office is yet another example of the reckless way Sahashi ran his firm, which filed for court protection under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law on Oct. 26.
Court-appointed administrators are hoping to come up with a new sponsor by the end of this week, which will allow about 7,000 unpaid teachers and 30,000 paid-up students to return to their schools.
Some experts see Nova’s sloppy management as well as huge investment in TV ads as key reasons for the firm’s failure, for which warning signs were seen starting around 2000.
Tsutomu Kuji, author of “Nova Shoho no Maryoku” (“The Magical Power of the Nova Business”), has tracked Nova’s rapid expansion in the 1990s, when it took advantage of the burst in the bubble economy and consequent land price plunge to acquire and rent classrooms at low cost. Then came another economic slump, but the chain continued to pursue expansion and splurge on ads, as Sahashi pursued his extravagant lifestyle.
Nova was investing huge amounts of its resources on TV commercials.
The firm’s advertisement fee rose from ¥4.6 billion in business 1996 to ¥8.9 billion in business 2002, according to Kuji.
In the business year to March, Nova spent ¥7 billion on ads, or about 12 percent of its total sales of ¥57 billion.
Kuji wrote how Nova attracted new students with eye-catching commercials, talked them into paying tens of thousands of yen for lesson tickets for up to three years in advance and then short-changed refunds to students who grew dissatisfied with what they had paid for.
This prompted students to sue Nova for reimbursement.
In April, the Supreme Court ruled Nova’s contract cancellation policy as illegal and ordered it to repay about ¥310,000 to a man who canceled his English lesson contract in 2004 but was offered a much smaller refund than promised.
Nova, however, was not the only company whose business suffered due to sloppy management.
There was a time in the early 1990s when many language schools went bankrupt, prompting an industry group to draw up regulations.
In 1994, the Japan Association for the Promotion of Foreign Language, which has 66 language schools or chains as members, came out with a regulation stipulating that only a year’s worth of lessons could be prepaid for.
“In many of those bankruptcy cases, companies used prepayment money to invest in real estate and golf course memberships, causing them to (run out of cash and) go bankrupt,” said Mihoko Fujimoto, the association’s spokeswoman.
Member companies are obliged to comply with the regulation. But Nova, Japan’s biggest language school chain, did not join.
Now rival language schools fear the Nova collapse may trigger a bankruptcy domino effect or a considerable drop in sales as distrust of the industry mounts.
There is speculation that Nova’s downfall, which was set in motion by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s partial business suspension order, contributed to the bankruptcy of the ABC Language School chain.
Osaka-based ABC Language, a small English-school chain, filed for court protection from creditors in July.
Gaba Corp., listed on the Mothers market for startups, said its net profit for the business year to December is expected to plunge 53 percent to ¥387 million.
Gaba said it has not been able to attract as many new students as expected this year because of the Nova meltdown.
But according to Yano Research Institute Ltd, the language school business has been declining since 2003 as the market became saturated.
The market peaked in 2003 with ¥375 billion in combined sales but it shrunk to ¥346 billion in business 2006, according to Yano Research.
The market is expected to drop 4.7 percent to ¥330 billion by the end of March, it said.
In 2003, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare began to slash grants for vocational education, including language courses, causing the market to shrink, said Mika Fukuoka, a researcher at Yano Research.
Grants for such courses started in 1998, allowing those who had paid job insurance premiums for five years or more to apply for the grant to cover 80 percent of lesson fees ? up to ¥300,000.
In 2003, however, the ministry limited the grant to 40 percent, or up to ¥200,000, after it determined some grant recipients had not been entitled to them.
The grant cut led to a decline in students and the industry began to shrink.
“Frankly speaking, I don’t think there is any language school whose business is on solid footing,” Fukuoka said.
Language school chains Gaba and Berlitz Japan Inc., which target high-end customers, are the few still relatively successful, Fukuoka said.
“During the bubble economy, many housewives who had time and money took English lessons as a hobby,” she said. “But now, only those who really need to study English will take lessons.”
Osaka Labor Bureau to report NOVA, ex-boss Sahashi to public prosecutors
The Osaka Labor Bureau has decided to send documents to public prosecutors accusing collapsed English school NOVA and its former president, Nozomu Sahashi, of violating the Labor Standards Law by failing to pay workers’ wages.
The bureau has obtained information on NOVA’s financial status from a preservation administrator for the firm, and is continuing an investigation into the company.
Bureau officials have already questioned teachers over the company’s actions. They questioned Sahashi over the allegations against him on Oct. 29. Sahashi reportedly admitted that salary payments remained outstanding.
“We tried to somehow raise the funds, but we couldn’t gather the money together,” Sahashi was quoted as saying. It is believed that the labor bureau investigated the circumstances surrounding the unpaid wages, and concluded that it was able to question his criminal liability.
NOVA’s financial situation has plummeted since June this year, when the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry handed the firm a partial business suspension order. The company has not made salary payments that were supposed to be delivered to foreign teachers and Japanese employees in September and October. The amount of unpaid wages is over 2 billion yen.
The General Union to which teachers and other NOVA workers belong earlier requested that a case against NOVA and Sahashi be formed, saying that the continued delayed payment of wages violated the Labor Standards Law.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20071106p2a00m0na020000c.html
Govt to help foreign students learn Japanese
The Education, Science and Technology Ministry will launch a program to help the increasing number of foreign students at public primary, middle and high schools to acquire Japanese language skills.
Currently, local governments handle Japanese language education for foreign students at public schools.
The ministry plans to provide financial and other support to the local governments to employ part-time instructors, who are proficient both in Japanese and a foreign language, with the goal of enhancing students’ understanding in classes and Japanese lessons.
According to the ministry, foreign nationals at public primary, middle and high schools throughout the country numbered 70,936 as of May 2006.
Of those students, 22,413 at a total of 5,475 schools did not understand Japanese sufficiently to absorb their lessons.
The number of these students increased by 8.3 percent from the previous year, and had been increasing annually.
Since the Immigration Control Law was revised to permit the employment of ethnic-Japanese foreign nationals for unskilled jobs in 1990, a growing number of people have come to Japan from South America.
Portuguese, spoken in Brazil, is the most common language among foreign students at 38 percent, followed by Chinese at 20 percent and Spanish at 15 percent.
Because these students do not speak Japanese, some have had trouble fitting in with classmates, which has led to behavior problems or even crimes.
The ministry is taking the increase in problems associated with Japanese language ability seriously and decided the central government needs to support local governments in this concern.
It has included 1.96 billion yen in its budget request for the next fiscal year for hiring about 1,600 bilingual instructors around the country by the end of that year.
In Japan, Teaching English for Food
When Natasha Steele came to Japan from her native Australia earlier this year to teach English, she was looking forward to immersing herself in a foreign culture while earning a little money on the side. Now, after the spectacular collapse of her employer, Japan’s biggest English language school chain, Steele has found herself jobless, threatened with eviction and hungry. “I was taken out and afterward, she took me to a bakery and told me I could have anything I wanted,” she says of one charitable student. “She just wanted to know I had enough food for at least two weeks.”
For many college graduates from English-speaking countries, spending a few months in Japan teaching English is a time-honored tradition. But after Nova shut the doors of its more than 800 locations worldwide last week, that tradition is looking precarious. The closure has left over 300,000 Nova students deprived of their prepaid English lessons, and many of its 5,000 foreign language teachers, like Steele, unlikely charity cases.
Nova, started by CEO Nozomu Sahashi in 1981 upon his return from studying in Paris, grew into a publicly listed chain with over 900 locations at its peak. But things started to unravel for the company in April, after Japan’s Supreme Court sided with a former student who sued the school over tuition refunds. Its rapid expansion had been funded largely through a prepaid credit system, where students bought thousands of dollars worth of lessons up front and received only partial refunds in the event of midterm cancellations. A subsequent government investigation led to a partial suspension of Nova’s operations, at which point hundreds of thousands of students demanded a refund on their prepaid tuition. The result was the equivalent of a bank run: as students rushed to close their accounts, the company fell some $380 million in debt and in October filed for corporate rehabilitation, the Japanese equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy. This has made it impossible for Nova’s creditors ? mostly students and teachers demanding tuition refunds and unpaid wages ? to collect their money. For the unsuspecting teachers, this has meant a crash course in Japanese labor law. Several have taken to the streets, leading demonstrations against Nova and Sahashi, while others have held press conferences accompanied by teachers’ union representatives ? Kristen Moon, a freshly arrived American, even appeared dressed as Nova’s corporate mascot, a pink bunny rabbit that has become famous through Nova TV commercials aired across Japan. Some airlines have offered discount flights home for cash-strapped teachers, while embassies have opened hotlines to aid their near-homeless citizens. Former Nova employees last week announced a “lessons for food” program, which would allow students to pay for lessons in meals and food items. Meanwhile, the sheer number of out-of-work teachers have glutted the local labor market for English instruction, causing other language schools to stop accepting applications.
The troubles for Nova don’t end there. A report by court-appointed lawyers investigating the case alleges that founder Sahashi ? since fired by the board and currently in hiding ? had turned his company into something of a personal piggy bank, lining his pockets through such ruses as buying teaching equipment from affiliated companies and selling them to Nova students at grossly inflated prices. He is also suspected of insider trading, misappropriation, and aggravated breach of trust. (Sahashi’s representative has filed a petition refuting such claims.) On Oct. 30, one government lawyer invited reporters to check out the lavish office at Nova’s Osaka headquarters ? complete with a fully stocked wet bar and a hidden bedroom and sauna. “Sahashi is still attempting the sell company shares in hiding. I wanted to show the extent of his misdeeds,” said Osaka attorney Toshiaki Higashibatake, who organized the event. Under Japanese corporate law, Nova can stay intact if it can find sponsors to underwrite its current business. But the company is losing money so rapidly ? its market value has been halved since filing for bankruptcy ? that the search for financial sponsors has been rushed, with proceedings expected to conclude later this week. If it fails to find sponsors for a bailout, Nova faces liquidation.
It’s unlikely that the scandal will put an end to Japan’s $1.2 billion foreign language education industry. Despite a widespread appetite for learning and an educational system that mandates six years of English study, Japan ranks below North Korea on standardized English proficiency tests, according to the U.S.-based Educational Testing Service. All that is small comfort, however, for teachers who share Steele’s plight. Said Moon, the bunny rabbit at the press conference: “I love this country, but I’m in limbo and my life is on hold.”
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1680652,00.html
Ex-pat English teachers stranded by collapse of Japan’s Nova schools
In a country teeming with cute cartoon characters, few are cuter or better known than the Nova bunny. The pink mascot stood in the doorways of language schools across Japan, promising a short educational encounter with an exotic foreigner. But now, thousands of teachers and students have found that the bunny bites, hard.
The collapse of Nova, Japan’s biggest employer of foreigners, has left 4,000 teachers ? including more than 900 from the UK ? stranded without work, money and, in some cases, a place to live. “There are people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from,” said Bob Tench, an official with Nova’s union. “It’s very distressing.”
The union is offering a lessons-for-food programme to former Nova students, 300,000 of whom have lost out on classes they have paid for. The British embassy in Tokyo has fielded dozens of calls from distressed ex-pats and several airlines are offering Nova teachers discounted tickets home.
“I came to pay off my college overdraft and credit card and now I’m living on pot noodles and cheap rice dishes,” said Alec Macfarlane, who joined Nova in the summer after graduating from Liverpool University. Like many teachers, he is officially homeless, has not been paid for months, and is depending on the charity of friends and family in the UK.
The unravelling of one of Japan’s most popular high-street companies has riveted nightly television viewers. The ubiquitous bunny fronted the nation’s largest private language chain, controlling nearly half the market for English-language teaching; two generations of Japanese had their first and sometimes only encounter with a foreigner in a Nova classroom. But while the company’s aggressive cost-cutting helped fuel Japan’s language-learning boom, its president, Nozomu Sahashi, was criticised for his stingy hiring policies and take-no-prisoners’ marketing.
Nova’s slide began earlier this year when the government ordered it to close temporarily for posting misleading advertisements, and banned it from selling long-term contracts. With students abandoning it and suing for refunds, it filed for bankruptcy last week, crippled by debts of 44bn yen (£185m).
Mr. Sahashi has fled the company’s offices and is nowhere to be found. In the meantime, Nova is promising that it will be back in business once it sorts out its financial problems. But furious ex-pat bloggers have already posted their verdict on their websites. “I’d like to boil that bunny in a pot,” wrote one.
Ex-NOVA boss questioned for breaking Labor Standards Law
Nozomu Sahashi, the founder of the failed NOVA Corp., has been questioned for breaking the Labor Standards Law by failing to pay his employees, government sources said.
Officials of the Osaka Labor Bureau of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry questioned Sahashi, 56, last Monday. They are considering whether to file a criminal complaint with law enforcers, accusing him of violating the Labor Standards Law.
During questioning, Sahashi admitted that the company failed to pay wages to employees. “We tried to raise the money to pay wages by all means, but we couldn’t,” he was quoted as telling bureau officials.
NOVA’s financial situation took a dive after the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry imposed a six-month ban from making long-term contracts with students in June for its unfair business practices.
It has not paid salaries for September and October to Japanese employees and wages for October to instructors. The unpaid wages amount to about 4 billion yen.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20071103p2a00m0na004000c.html