Roy Bijkerk defends Guardian Youth Care after alleged ’20m misappropriation’

The government has called it a $19.6 million misappropriation and funded liquidation hearings to find out what happened.

Mr Bijkerk has remained silent since the Herald first questioned the charity’s solvency and its links to former criminals more than a year ago.

But last week he defended the subcontracting as entirely legitimate. “I’ve got nothing to hide here,” he said when asked about some documents.

The Herald has previously reported allegations of “appalling” conditions at Guardian Youth Care homes, made by former staff and children who lived in them. They described a lack of food and clothing, youth workers forced to work triple shifts and dangerous combinations of children.

Mr Bijkerk, however, said the organisation met every benchmark and preferred to house fewer children in the one home than was suggested by Community Services. “We were the highest level carer in the state.”

Mr Bijkerk’s for-profit company Alpha Support Services received millions of dollars in taxpayer funds from its sole client, Guardian, to provide services including food, accommodation, training and psychology sessions.

Alpha had other expenses, too.

It paid Mr Bijkerk and his badociates hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in consultancy fees as well as profit distributions.

The court heard it paid for TV installation and landscaping at one of Mr Bijkerk’s properties on the Gold Coast where a friend named Chantelle lived.

“The first priority was to make sure every single thing was being done for those kids,” he said. “Whatever was left was spent in different ways, but I didn’t know that was illegal.”

The charity’s payroll manager Samantha Madigan testified in an earlier hearing that Mr Bijkerk took a “work trip” to Dubai with a woman named Chantelle, one the court heard had cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Mr Bijkerk was not asked about the trip in his evidence and it was unclear whether the woman on the trip was the same Chantelle who lived in his home.

Then there were the boat expenses.

Barrister Philip Santucci, for the liquidator McGrathNicol, asked about hundreds of dollars spent on fees for boat care.

“The idea initially was to try to raise some money and stuff like fundraisers but actually it was for me,” Mr Bijkerk said of the boat.

“You are making out like I stole it from Guardian Youth Care,” he said earlier. “I take offence to that.”

Convicted of conspiring to import three kilograms of cocaine with underworld figure Warren Richards, Mr Bijkerk spent several years in jail in the early 2000s.

He told the court on Thursday he then worked as a youth worker from 2002 to 2008, before moving into a management role.

Mr Bijkerk also co-owned a western Sydney unit block that received rent to house the charity’s children – the same block used to finance a $500,000 loan to the former brothel-owner and large-scale gambler Edward Hayson.

Asked why Mr Hayson wanted the money, Mr Bijkerk replied “I badume gambling.” It was a “good deal” as it was secured by a property and drew in $25,000 a month in interest.

To source the loan, Mr Hayson had gone to Mr Bijkerk’s business partner Ned Bikic, a convicted murderer receiving money as a foster care consultant to the charity and as a maintenance man.

Before Mr Bikic, the maintenance job was done by another of Mr Bijkerk’s business partners, a greyhound trainer named John McGeary.

The pair were co-directors of several offshore companies named by the Panama Papers investigation into the law firm Mossack Fonseca but Mr Bijkerk told the court they had never traded.

It was with Mr McGeary that “we had meetings with Alan Jones” to discuss “funding”, he said.

“He was a lot more than [the maintenance man].”

Earlier, accountant Paul Clarke of CBC Partners gave evidence that he signed the 2012 funding agreement between the government and the charity while at lunch.

Mr Clarke, who served on the charity’s board while also a beneficiary of the subcontracting arrangements, said he read the agreement quickly as it needed to be signed urgently.

He told the court he did not see the clause that forbade subcontracting without permission and did not re-read the contract for several years.

The witnesses examined so far may be recalled for further hearings.