Privium Homes collapse: Building boss’ charity used to pay off $1m in credit card bills and personal spending

A Christian charity founded by boss of collapsed building giant Privium Homes paid off credit card debts and funded $1m in personal spending, according to a liquidator’s report.

Funds from a Christian charity founded by the boss of collapsed building giant Privium Homes were used to pay off credit card debts and fund personal spending of more than $1m, according to a liquidator’s report filed with the corporate regulator ASIC.

Love Your World, started by Rob Harder and his wife Rachel in 2012, is now being wound up after being found to owe creditors in excess of $8m. The charity, of which Mr and Mrs Harder are former directors, received donations and bequests of $7.1m in 2020 to help provide church pastoral programs based at the Hillsong Central Campus in Mount Gravatt.

Both Mr and Mrs Harder were members of the Hillsong Church but a spokesperson for Hillsong said the entities and Privium had “no connection in any way to Hillsong Church”. The church is not accused of any wrongdoing.

Love Your World’s registered address was the same as Privium, the building company founded by Mr Harder that collapsed in November 2021 leaving hundreds of unfinished projects around the country and debts of at least $80m.

According to a report to Love Your World creditors lodged with ASIC by liquidator Michael Caspaney, of Menzies Advisory, an investigation by the Australian Taxation Office had identified payments to Mrs Harder of $1.02m which “she used for personal and discretionary expenses” without evidence of board approval. The report also said the company also made payments towards Robert Harder’s credit card totalling more than $100,000 in 2019 and 2020.

Privium boss and founder Rob Harder

“In my opinion, the company has been left virtually assetless by the stroke of various journal entries, which according to audit trails, were actioned by Robert Harder,” according to the report filed with the corporate regulator. “As well as this, the financial records of the company bear no record of large payments to related parties.”

This included a payment of $800,000 to a superannuation fund associated with Robert and Rachel Harder. “The ATO’s decision to remove the tax exempt status of the company also has created a large debt to the ATO,” the report said.

The report said there was no evidence that the company held annual general meetings or kept minutes from 2018. “The board of directors delegated various financial decisions involving its most significant assets to Robert Harder but there is no evidence of any resolutions, minutes of meeting or other record of the delegation,” the report said.

Those assets included $1.29m in the cryptocurrency known as qoin. The company’s auditor withdrew his audit reports for 2019 and 2020 because the information “provided to him may have been tainted by irregularities,” the report lodged with ASIC said.

The report said the liquidator had found evidence of journal entries entered into the Xero accounting software package which were “not founded on any transactions through the company’s bank account nor can they be substantiated with any documentation.”

“These journals and many others at other times in the company’s recent history have rendered the Xero accounting reports as literally useless for my analysis of the company’s financial position and its financial performance,” the report said.

Love Your World’s registered address was the same as Privium HQ at Eight Mile Plains.

Comment on the report has been sought from Mr and Mrs Harder. According to a recent LinkedIn posting, Mr Harder is now a “life coach” and that “instead of dwelling on the past, we’ve decided to use our passion, our experiences and what I’ve learnt over the last 30 years of being in business and particularly the lessons learnt in the final chapter.”

“Over the last 18 months I have had all my social media on private. Today I have switched it back to public,” the posting said. “It’s been a hard and scary step for me and even as I write this, I am feeling nervous. Any business that goes into liquidation causes people a lot of pain and the demise of Privium Group, which at its peak employed over 250 staff and had revenue of more than $250 million, is no exception. As founder and CEO of Privium Group I know there are many people including Privium employees that have been greatly impacted and I am truly sorry for the pain and anguish the demise of Privium has caused for so many people.”