SINGAPORE — Several City Harvest Church leaders who tried anxiously to borrow money in 2010 were doing so because of the church’s purchase of a stake in Suntec Singapore, one of the defence lawyers in the trial told the court yesterday.
Funds were needed for the acquisition, said Senior Counsel N Sreenivasan, the lawyer of Tan Ye Peng, one of the accused.
The church had purchased a 20 per cent stake in Suntec in early 2010, which it subsequently increased to 39.2 per cent.
Mr Sreenivasan said that, according to his client, the church sought funds through loans and through the return of advance rentals it had paid under a Licence Agreement to audio-visual services company Xtron Productions.
Prosecutors in the trial of five church leaders and a former leader had on Thursday produced BlackBerry and e-mail discussions in early 2010 among Tan, church co-founder Kong Hee, former fund manager Chew Eng Han, accountant Serina Wee Gek Yin and others on the urgent need for loans worth millions of dollars.
Yesterday, Mr Sreenivasan tried to show that the transactions at the heart of some criminal charges — what prosecutors contend is the “round-tripping” of church funds related to sham bond transactions — were not unusual.
The redemption of bonds issued by prosecution witness Wahju Hanafi’s Indonesian company PT The First National Glassware (Firna) to the church, which were then reissued to Xtron, were akin to restructuring of loans, he suggested.
And the funding given to Firna by Chew’s investment firm AMAC Capital Partners via Ultimate Assets — Mr Hanafi’s British Virgin Islands-incorporated shell company — was “bridging finance” to ease Firna’s cash-flow issues.
Agreeing with Mr Sreenivasan’s suggestions, Mr Hanafi said that as Firna’s owner, he did not feel there was anything dishonest about the bond transactions or the funds of S$5.8 million and S$5.6 million he received from AMAC.
The Indonesian businessman and long-time church attendee also told Senior Counsel Kenneth Tan — former church board member John Lam Leng Hung’s lawyer — that as far as he knew, Lam was not involved in budgeting and financing of the Crossover Project, the church’s endeavour to reach out to non-Christians through the music career of Kong’s wife, Ms Ho Yeow Sun.
The six accused allegedly misappropriated S$24 million of church funds into sham bonds for Ms Ho’s career, and another S$26.6 million to cover up the first amount.
Defence lawyers will continue their cross-examination of Mr Hanafi on Monday.
Cheats is the way they bought Suntec shares. SGX and Gov should investigate this further and confiscate their illegal purchases of Suntec shares through Xtron and proxies of Kong Hee. All are scams and defrauding the Public by lack of transparency - breaking SGX rules. Or did SGX allow this?
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