[SINGAPORE] Throngs of faithful supporters, family members and rubber-neckers crowded the Subordinate Courts yesterday as City Harvest Church (CHC) pastor Kong Hee and five other defendants charged with criminal breach of trust (CBT) turned up for the second tranche of the year's most high-profile hearing.
Court 3, which will host the proceedings for the next four weeks, was full to bursting as both concerned and curious individuals sought to ensure that they got a piece of the action.
Yesterday saw the prosecution attempt to make its case that church members had dishonestly misappropriated $13 million from the church's Building Fund to fund Kong's wife Sun Ho's music career - under the guise of buying up "sham" bonds from the music production house that managed her career, Xtron Productions.
Deputy public prosecutor Christopher Ong, who led the questioning yesterday, called up a string of emails between the accused, seeking to prove that they manipulated details of a bond issue by Xtron to CHC to suit their purposes.
Kong, deputy senior pastor Tan Ye Peng (Tan YP), former board member Chew Eng Han, board member John Lam Leng Hung, finance manager Sharon Tan, and former finance manager and board member Serina Wee, stand accused of misusing some $50 million of the church's funds to promote Ms Ho's music career through an elaborate series of round-tripping and sham bond transactions.
Chew, Wee and the two Tans are also charged with conspiring to falsify accounts.
The publicised split between the CHC defendants was obvious before yesterday's session began, as Chew - who announced in June he had cut off ties with the rest of the church - stood conspicuously apart from the other defendants, even while Ms Ho looked on from the public gallery in a show of support for her husband.
Chew had suggested on his blog that he left the church because his spiritual and moral principles did not align with theirs.
The hearing, the first tranche of which took place for a week in May, resumed yesterday with Choong Kar Weng, one of two directors of Xtron and a former CHC board member, on the stand.
Mr Choong testified that he had little idea as to whether Xtron had enough cash to redeem some $13 million worth of bonds it issued to the church in 2007, ostensibly to cover a shortfall of cash on the part of Xtron, when he signed off on the deal to issue the bonds. He added that he did not get involved with Xtron's bond issue, leaving this to several members of the church even though none of them held a position in Xtron.
"I'm just not familiar with all these bonds, the issuing of bonds," he said.
Mr Choong, a Malaysian with permanent resident status in Singapore, added that he relied upon the cashflow projections prepared by Wee, who provided accounting services to Xtron.
"Can you tell us who made the decisions when the bonds should be drawn out?" DPP Ong asked.
"I can't tell you who made the decisions. As I said, once the overall budget has been approved, I leave it to Serina (Wee)," Mr Choong said.
DPP Ong referred to an email Wee sent to Tan YP in 2007, which said: "This cashflow is based on the conservative estimate of 200,000 (Sun Ho) albums sold. With the proceeds . . . (we) will not be able to repay the $13 million bonds or have funds to do another album."
In another email, Wee said to Tan YP: "We based our projection on 200,000 copies of English Album (by Sun Ho) sold which will only yield us $2.7 million - hardly enough to pay off the $13 million. So we will need 10 years (as a repayment period for Xtron) as previously discussed, assuming no other new unbudgeted expenditure."
In yet another email called up by DPP Ong yesterday, Wee says to Tan YP about the repayment period: "Just that CHC can't keep having this $13 million being invested in bonds once the building is on the way and completed. Members will wonder why do we still need to raise so much money and then still have money to invest."
Mr Choong said Tan YP was involved in these discussions, even though he held no position in Xtron, because the church was invested in the success of Ms Ho's music albums.
"The Crossover Project (CHC's idea of using pop music for evangelism) is the partnership between Xtron and City Harvest. Xtron manages Sun (Ho), but there is a higher purpose where we want to touch lives. They (Kong and Tan YP) are not . . . I don't see them as working full-time for Xtron. In many ways, they are just fulfilling their parts in . . . from CHC point of view," Mr Choong said.
When asked why, if it was Xtron that needed money at the time, that it was Kong and Chew who proposed the idea of the bond issue to Mr Choong (instead of the other way around), Mr Choong said: "The Crossover Project is important to both Xtron as well as to CHC . . . it's just in the interests of both parties to solve this matter."
"How we work, for the Crossover Project, is that I personally don't get involved when the money was being sent. I left all those things to Serina (Wee)," he added.
The hearing resumes today, with Mr Choong remaining on the stand.
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