The Free State High Court Judge Celeste Reinders delivered a judgment against the Ad Laudem independent school. The school made headlines in 2022 after failing to pay its workers whilst it was further alleged that senior of officials at the school including the co-founder, Lizette Roets, paid themselves huge salaries.

The school staff would allegedly receive as little as R400, R800, and R1 000 in installments every month.

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The school was dragged to the High Court by one of the investors who contributed R2 million in 2019, which allegedly disappeared from the coffers of the cash-strapped school.

Judge Reinders, in her 5-page court order, said all interested parties must show cause before 1 June 2023 as to why the provisional order should not be made a final liquidation order. This means that all business the school entered into will be affected and might have to be reversed.

At the beginning of 2023, the school allegedly ceased to operate a few days before the reopening of schools for the academic year on Wednesday 11 January 2023.

This was after financial trouble which beset the Ad Laudem Independent School near the Universitas Academic Hospital.

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The Free State Department of Education spokesperson, Howard Ndaba, previously said the school had ceased to exist and school pupils would be transferred to at least two local schools in Bloemfontein.

He said they met and discussed the transfer of the pupils to these two schools after Ad Laudem ran into financial difficulties. Ndaba recently told OFM News that the department had made several attempts to meet with the school management in 2022 but all efforts were in vain.

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Ndaba confirmed that the school did receive a government subsidy to help it run its school affairs.  It's understood that in January this year, school pupils were transferred to a local school and Roets is the only school official to have placement or a post at a known Bloemfontein school, whilst other officials were relegated to the unemployment lines.

The school also had a R500 000 garnishee order from the South African Revenue Services (SARS).

In December 2022, a source told OFM News that they have also approached the Free State Hawks with the intention to have the troubled school investigated following the alleged financial misconduct.

OFM News