SINGAPORE: At the continuing trial of six City Harvest Church leaders on Friday, details of the close relationship between church founder Kong Hee and a former director of Xtron emerged.
Indonesia businessman Wahju Hanafi was a director of production company Xtron between 2003 and 2007. Xtron is one of two companies accused of helping the church leaders misuse church funds to promote the singing career of Kong's wife, Sun Ho.
Mr Hanafi also owns the second company that has been named in the case.
A long-time member of the church, Mr Hanafi said that its teachings had changed him as a person. It led him to pay back more than S$1 million in evaded taxes. After he paid up the taxes, he said his business made a S$10 million profit. Later in 1998, he made a S$1 million donation to the church.
It was after this donation that Kong invited Mr Hanafi to dinner to thank him, and the pair became closer.
The court also heard that that the two men, Kong and Mr Hanafi, co-own a Sentosa Cove property, in which each of them have been paying a monthly instalment of S$17,000 each since 2008.
Although Mr Hanafi was a director of Xtron, he said his main role was as a sponsor for the company. He said he gave between S$1 million and S$1.5 million to Xtron instead of to the church for the Crossover Project.
The Crossover Project is an effort to reach out to non-Christians through Ms Ho's secular music.
Mr Hanafi said that Xtron started to need more money to finance the Crossover project after he decided to step down as director, to focus on his other company Firna.
He said this following questions from the prosecution about the issuing of the S$13 million bonds. He said this was because at the time, the company was preparing to launch Ms Ho's music in the US as a way for her to make inroads into the Chinese market.
Mr Hanafi said that later, when Ms Ho was invited to stage concerts in various parts of China, each concert would require a lot of money to be raised.
Mr Hanafi was also asked by the prosecution to detail his personal relationships with the other accused leaders. He said he was close to John Lam, who had been his cell-group leader when he first joined the church.
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