[SINGAPORE]
The defence launched its cross-examination of City Harvest Church's
(CHC) one-time external auditor yesterday with Kong Hee's lawyer
establishing that the auditor had no grounds on which to give any direct
evidence on the CHC founder and senior pastor.
Sim
Guan Seng, managing partner of local public accounting firm Baker Tilly
TFW, testified yesterday that he had no contact, communication or
dealings with Kong during his entire time as the audit engagement
partner of CHC and Xtron Productions (a music production house that
helped manage CHC's evangelisation-through-pop- music Crossover
Project).
Mr
Sim said he could not testify as to what Kong did, knew or was aware of
- in relation to the evidence that the auditor had tendered on Monday
and Tuesday - given that he had no dealings with Kong throughout the
entire audit period.
Mr
Sim had spent the first two days of the week on the stand, answering
the prosecution's questions. Among various things, he had said that the
emails and documents - mostly internal correspondence between senior CHC
members - shown to him by the prosecution had raised "a lot" of doubts
and concerns about the veracity of CHC's bond investments in Xtron and
another company, The First National Glassware (Firna).
Under
cross-examination by the defence counsel, Mr Sim clarified that he had
not seen any of the emails and other documents shown to him by the
prosecution before seeing them in court this week.
Therefore,
the doubts and concerns he raised about the various transactions were
merely questions he had, based on his initial reading of the documents.
He said he was not drawing any conclusions on them, and could not do so,
without understanding their context.
"My
answers are based on what was shown to me . . . I can't form a
conclusion unless I have an opportunity to talk to those who are
involved in the email and seek an explanation (from them)," Mr Sim said.
"And
evaluate the entire context and circumstances behind the particular
email, correct?" Edwin Tong, defence counsel for Kong, asked.
"Yes," Mr Sim answered.
He
also testified that he knew that the bond issues were paid for using
money from CHC's Building Fund, which he said could be used for
investments.
"The
Building Fund can be used to make an investment and I don't think that
is a problem . . . Based on the information shown to me, the issue or
doubts I have are whether these transactions are investments or not," he
said.
He
testified on Tuesday that, based on a spreadsheet prepared by CHC which
he was shown - which laid out the timeline of funds paid out from CHC
for its various investments - it appeared to him that the funds had been
roundtripped, using the various entities laid out in the timeline.
He
said on Tuesday that the spreadsheet "leads me to question whether the
investments by CHC . . . are really investments in the first place".
This evidence was revisited yesterday by Senior Counsel Kannan Ramesh, counsel for CHC finance manager Sharon Tan.
Mr
Ramesh said the prosecution had posed questions to Mr Sim, using the
assumption that the transactions in the spreadsheet "were transactions
which were carried out only with the knowledge and planning of certain
members of management, including the accused".
"If
I ask you to tell me whether your views would still remain if these
transactions, or the substance of these transactions, were disclosed to
the board of the church, deliberated upon by the board of the church and
approved by the board of the church, would your answers still be the
same?" Mr Ramesh asked.
"My answer would still be the same," Mr Sim said.
"Would
you be able to take that position without speaking to the members of
the board to understand why they had given the go-ahead?" Mr Ramesh
pressed.
Mr
Sim replied: "Just the matter of it having been approved doesn't mean
very much to me as an auditor. The whole board could be in collusion to
approve this. It makes no difference to the substance of the actual flow
of funds."
The hearing continues.
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