A JAILED fraudster linked to the $5 million collapse of Harvest Homes has been declared bankrupt and his finance company, which claimed to hold a majority stake in the Newcastle builder, has been placed in liquidation.
Oliver Roths, formerly known as Oliver Banovec, was declared bankrupt last month with debts of more than $400,000 and his company AXL Financial has collapsed with debts of more than $11.5 million.
During a public examination into the demise of Harvest Homes in the Federal Court last year, directors Steve Taylor and Dean Turner told how they unwittingly handed control of their business to Roths, when AXL Financial took a majority shareholding in the Mayfield-based builder.
The pair, who were unaware Roths was a convicted fraudster, said that within a few months Harvest Homes started experiencing cashflow problems and went from turning over $20 million to liquidation in just over two years.
Mr Turner and Mr Taylor said they had no idea who Roths was when they agreed to let him become a "major shareholder" in mid-2017.
The directors learnt just a few months before GLFB Pty Ltd (trading as Harvest Homes NSW) and subsidiary Harvest Homes (Properties) collapsed, with debts of more than $5 million, that Roths was a convicted fraudster.
Roths is a former eastern suburbs rich kid who was sentenced in 2010 to seven years' jail for fraudulently using $500,000 of an investor's money to support his business.
Some know him as Oliver Roths, others as Oliver Banovec or Oliver Kwoka and more still as Duke Oliver Roths.
The 45-year-old officially changed his name from Oliver Banovec in 2017 following criminal convictions for fraud and perjury.
During last year's public examinations into the collapse of Harvest Homes, Roths struggled to explain how he managed to rent a luxury house in North Sydney for $3400 a week when he declared to the tax office the previous year that he earned $45,000.
Under questioning, Roths said he was unsure what bank accounts the rent was paid from, or exactly who paid the rent.
He described himself as an "aggrieved creditor" of Harvest Homes, owed almost $3 million, but was unable to provide documentation to prove the claim.
The Federal Court heard that Roths concealed his past by changing his name and offered to buy a 51 per cent stake in Harvest Homes NSW for more than $1 million, via AXL Financial, but the funds were never paid.
Instead, the parties came to an agreement that Harvest Homes would build 61 dwellings on 38 blocks of land at Warnervale, on the Central Coast, and Roths, via AXL Financial, would provide the funding.
According to the directors, Roths told them that AXL Financial owned the land at Warnervale, but they later found out it didn't.
According to liquidator Jason Tang, of Cor Cordis, AXL Financial has $30 in the bank, owes 53 unsecured creditors more than $11 million and four secured creditors $365,292. Mr Tang said none of the creditors can expect a return unless possible claims for insolvent trading and uncommercial transactions can be proven.
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