A ghost charity and rescue dogs: the mystery of a well-connected, ex-PwC businessman

Where is Scale Facilitation’s promised US charity? And why were people interested in the charity’s Australian arm, until last week, directed instead to information about a Queensland dog rescue organisation?

Add these to the questions swirling around New York-based Australian entrepreneur David Collard’s corporate empire. Other mysteries include the circumstances that led to a tax office raid on Collard’s Geelong-based office, the alleged non-payment of staff wages and office rent in Manhattan, and the future of a hyped battery project in Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles’ electorate. 

Scale Facilitation’s Australian office was set up by PwC veteran Collard in 2021 after he left the consultancy’s New York office, where he had been transferred and made partner at the impressive age of 32. The company specialises in “commercialising innovation” — in other words, turning ideas into money-making enterprises. Scale Facilitation calls itself “a company that creates companies”, a slogan it has attempted to trademark in the US.

The company, which has been promoted by Marles, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and other political heavy-hitters for its potential to deepen business relations between the US and Australia, expanded fast in its first few years. 

Realising that if the company’s ambition to “disrupt the way in which commercialising of innovation occurs” became reality that it can also “result in loss of employment, businesses, and even industry”, Collard’s firm decided to set up a pair of charities in Australia and the US.

According to Collard’s corporate biography, the charities are “aimed at supporting individuals and communities going through a period of adjustment”.

Crikey managed, with some difficulty, to locate papers associated with Scale Facilitation’s Australian charity, known as the Transition Foundation. 

A “governing document” was uploaded to Scale Facilitation’s page on the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) website last Friday, after Crikey inquired with the company and the ACNC why it was missing. 

Prior to that, Scale Facilitation’s page on the charities register instead featured a governing document for an organisation called German Shorthaired Pointer Rescue Queensland Inc. That was puzzling, given that disrupting innovation commercialisation has nothing to do with helping dogs find a good home.

“Thanks for contacting Scale Facilitation® regarding our Transition Foundation,” a company representative wrote in reply to Crikey. “We have alerted our lawyers that the wrong governing document is on our ACNC profile page and requested this be rectified ASAP.”

Turns out it was the ACNC’s fault. A media officer with the regulator emailed to say that “the upload error was ours … compounded by an IT glitch”. 

A representative for the dog charity said it was not “in any way” related to Scale Facilitation.

That may explain the document mix-up, but it still doesn’t reveal what happened to Scale Facilitation’s US charity. 

Collard’s bio says the Transition Foundation is “a non-profit with arms in both Australia and the US”.

Another tab on the Scale Facilitation website says: “We have established the Scale Facilitation® Transition Foundation in both Australia and the US”.

But searches on the US equivalent of the ACNC register, maintained by the tax office internal revenue service, have not turned up any matches for any corporate names associated with Collard’s businesses. 

Scale Facilitation’s media office has ignored repeated requests for information on the US charity. 

And the governing document for the Australian charity specifically states it “is established in and must operate only in Australia”, so it seems in order, if the US arm really does exist, that it would be registered on its own with authorities in that country. 

Still, the charity paperwork may be the least of Scale Facilitation’s worries. 

Crikey has confirmed that the Australian federal government’s multi-agency Serious Financial Crime Taskforce raided Scale Facilitation’s Geelong offices in June, as part of an investigation into alleged taxation fraud. 

It’s known that the Australian Federal Police led the raid and that the Australian Tax Office is one of the agencies on the taskforce, but little else has been confirmed. The Herald Sun reported the search warrants were issued in connection to “allegations of four charges of tax fraud amounting to $150m across four different businesses”. 

The raid has thrown “uncertainty over plans” by Collard to establish a battery factory in the UK, the Financial Times reported.

It may also have complicated matters for Scale Facilitation subsidiary Recharge Industries, which works out of the same Geelong offices the authorities raided in June. Recharge Industries announced plans last year for a lithium-ion battery facility at Avalon Airport, located in Marles’ electorate of Corio.

The Geelong Advertiser reported last week Recharge Industries chief executive Rob Fitzpatrick left the company after the raid, though it is not suggested he had anything to do with any alleged wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, Supreme Court of New York documents obtained by Crikey reveal Collard is facing a lawsuit for the alleged failure to pay his US$75,000 monthly apartment rent on New York’s “billionaire’s row” in midtown Manhattan, as well as a petition by a sub-landlord alleging Scale Facilitation has failed to pay its US$200,000 monthly rent for offices on the 88th floor of the One World Trade Centre.

The New York State Department of Labor has also confirmed to Crikey it’s looking into Scale Facilitation. According to the website Open Politics, which first reported that probe, it relates to the alleged failure to pay wages.

Crikey attempted to contact Collard and his media team for comment without success. According to the Advertiser, both Recharge Industries and Collard have denied all wrongdoing and committed to cooperating with investigators.