Chew Eng Han has been called many things. A traitor for breaking with
City Harvest Church (CHC) and exposing its inner circle in court.
Others call him courageous.
By his own admission, the 55-year-old investment manager is just a tired man.
"It seems like I've got so many enemies," he told The Sunday Times. "So many battles, I've got to fight so many people."
His
fund management business has gone belly up. He is being sued for $21
million in unreturned investments by CHC. And the 142-day corruption
trial ended on Friday with him and five other former and current church
leaders sentenced to prison.
Chew now faces six years in jail.
The
only one who received a longer sentence - eight years - was Kong Hee,
the church's 51-year-old founding pastor. Last month, the six were
convicted of misusing $24 million in church funds to bankroll the
secular music career of Kong's wife, singer-pastor Ho Yeow Sun. A
further $26 million was later used to cover up their tracks.
Judge
See Kee Oon made it clear Chew shouldered a lot of the blame alongside
Kong. In his written judgment, he called them "kindred spirits" who
"fuelled each other's drive, one as a spiritual leader and the other as a
finance expert".
On Friday, the judge said Chew's role
as the church's investment manager meant several of the other accused
relied on his opinion.
Chew was, after all, responsible
for devising the bonds - which the court has declared as sham - through
which the church's money was funnelled to the Crossover Project, which
aimed to use Ms Ho's pop music to evangelise to the unchurched.
But
Chew continues to insist that the bonds were legitimate. Instead,
Crossover was the sham, he said pointedly during the interview, which
took place before he was found guilty.
"We expected to
make money from (Sun Ho's albums), and Sun was meant to get souls saved;
this was the best thing the church would ever do. But, as it turns out,
the album was a sham. The Crossover was a sham. The bond was a good
bond - what went on behind the scene made it look like a sham."
The
Crossover Project started in 2002, said Chew, seven years after he
joined CHC. "Kong Hee said Sun Ho was making inroads among youth through
her concerts."
Kong told the church God gave him the
vision for the project, and it was a sacred mission, said Chew, one he
initially believed in.
"I thought we were shaking Christians out from their slumber."
In
2003, church member Roland Poon went public with accusations that
donations meant for CHC's building fund were being misused to fuel Ms
Ho's music career.
And this, said Chew, prompted Kong
to decide to distance the church from his wife's music career, at least
on paper. And he had the church's backing, added Chew.
"Not
everything done in secrecy is a conspiracy," he said, pointing out that
members were told at church of the thousands of souls being saved at Ms
Ho's concerts. To him, CHC seemed "so different from other churches,
always at the forefront of new things".
Even when Ms Ho
started raising eyebrows by gyrating in skimpy clothing in her music
videos, Chew believed in the mission. "Deep inside, I was a bit
uncomfortable, but I didn't express this because of my loyalty to Kong
Hee and Sun."
That belief started to falter when he and
16 others from the church were questioned by the Commercial Affairs
Department in 2010. He managed a glance at Kong while the latter was
inside an interview room. The pastor met his eyes, then looked down.
Later, in a meeting with the church's lawyer, Chew described how Kong
kept silent, in stark contrast to how he reacted to the Poon incident
seven years earlier. Kong had gone on the offensive then, announcing to
the church that "not a single cent" was used to promote Ms Ho's pop
career.
A report by the Commissioner of Charities (COC)
later revealed that between December 2007 and May 2010, at least $2.1
million of church funds had been channelled through an affiliate church
in Kuala Lumpur to Crossover.
The report also said
church donations were transferred to a private fund, called the
multi-purpose account. Through this account, money would be transferred
to Kong - around $600,000 allegedly went to him this way.
Chew claimed in court that Kong was more interested in personal gain than the church.
He
told The Sunday Times he had confronted Kong about the COC report in a
private meeting in March 2013. "Several times... Kong said, 'Let's
forget about everything that we are talking about. I just want to know
are we good or not... Are you still on my side or not?' "
But
Chew urged Kong to talk to CHC's board and executive members - to "just
apologise and repent". When Kong did not, Chew quit the church after
being a member for 17 years. Chew added that he bears "no grudge in my
heart". But he hopes his departure would send a signal to other members
and get them to think about the church more critically.
These
days, strangers do come up to him to wish him well. One even paid for
his meal at a Japanese restaurant and left him two Bible verses for
encouragement.
"They actually thank me for having the
courage to speak up," said Chew, who intends to write a book about his
experience "once this is over". "It will make a good movie," he added
with a smile. But it may be a while before the saga is over.
On Friday, he told the court that he will appeal against both the guilty verdict and his sentence.
All the donors, they
knew that it's a freewill giving, we didn't coerce them, we didn't force
them... We always treated this as a third-party fund with
accountability... We do not use it in a cavalier fashion.
- Kong Hee
The multi-purpose account (MPA) was set up in 2006 to support the
livelihoods of City Harvest Church (CHC) founder Kong Hee and his wife,
Ms Ho Yeow Sun.
This private fund was financed by 28 couples and a few other
individuals but its full amount or how the money was used was never
fully disclosed - not even to the donors.
This means they allegedly did not know that Ms Ho pocketed about
$450,000 in "salaries, bonuses and royalties" from the MPA each year
from 2007 till 2009.
This was Kong's own admission in court in August last year during the criminal trial involving him and five other CHC leaders.
Kong told the court - as former CHC fund manager Chew Eng Han
cross-examined him - that he and Ms Ho went off the church's payroll in
2005.
The MPA was later created and funded by about 40 donors, including
Chew. They deposited over $700,000 into the MPA each year from 2007 to
2009.
Kong said: "All the donors, they knew that it's a freewill giving, we didn't coerce them, we didn't force them.
"Some of them did indicate that we should use it for nothing else
except for our own livelihood. We always treated this as a third-party
fund with accountability... We do not use it in a cavalier fashion."
He added that the money was primarily used for his wife and his livelihood as well as for the Crossover Project's expenses.
But Chew accused Kong of withholding the account's full details in
2010 by hiding the royalties, salaries and bonuses from the spreadsheet
showed to donors and showing a deficit instead, so they would be spurred
to give more money.
Chew said: "You defrauded the MPA givers by hiding the royalties and
the salaries and the bonuses from the spreadsheet which you showed to
them, so that they would be emotionally led to contribute more to you
and to Sun."
Kong said his wife did not want the joint venture between her artist
management company and Justin Hertz Management to pay for her royalties
so the money could be maximised for the music album production.
Kong also claimed Xtron was tight with cash so his wife had to rely
on the MPA as well. His wife then took out what she would have earned
from the MPA instead of Xtron's accounts.
He also said he hid the figures from donors in 2008 because he did
not have a chance to check with his wife whether she was comfortable
revealing her salaries and royalties.
Kong said: "We do have a culture in CHC, as in many companies, that we keep our income as confidential."
The donors stopped giving to the MPA in 2010 after the Commercial Affairs Department's raid on CHC.