City Harvest ‘took big risks to achieve big objectives’ (Today: 18 July 2014)

SINGAPORE — When City Harvest Church was developing its site in Jurong West, there was a risk that the surrounding blocks of flats could collapse because the church would be digging eight storeys below ground. The building would feature a column-free space for about 2,000 worshippers. With the help of experts and engineers, the feat was accomplished in 2002.

Yesterday, the church’s former investment manager and one of six church leaders facing criminal charges for misuse of church funds, Chew Eng Han, sought to detail the church’s history of risk-taking. Chew, who discharged his lawyer in May and chose to represent himself, pointed out that City Harvest also took risks for its Crossover Project to reach out to non-Christians through co-founder Ho Yeow Sun’s secular pop music career.

It is a church that took big risks to achieve big objectives, said Chew yesterday as he grilled co-accused and former church board member John Lam Leng Hung, who was the first defence witness. Lam agreed with Chew that the purchase of bonds from two firms to support Ms Ho’s career was founded on the faith that her album would be a hit.

Prosecutors contend that the two bond investments in multimedia firm Xtron Productions, which also managed Ms Ho, and Indonesian glassware firm PT The First National Glassware (Firna) were a sham and misuse of S$24 million of church building funds.

Chew, Lam and four others, including church co-founder Kong Hee, face three to 10 each for criminal breach of trust and falsification of accounts.

During his cross-examination yesterday, Chew ripped into Lam’s testimony on the previous days that the former had suggested making the investments in Xtron and Firna.

Lam had told the court that specific investments of church funds were left to Chew’s investment firm, AMAC Capital Partners. But Chew pointed out that Lam had told the Commercial Affairs Department in 2010 that any investment would be evaluated by the church’s investment committee, which Lam was part of, and approved by the church board.

He also noted the financial and spiritual objectives of the Xtron bond investment and, under persistent questioning, Lam conceded that it was Kong who had authority over spiritual matters at the church.

Chew also grilled Lam on why he never asked who was behind the idea to raise S$13 million for the Crossover Project, to which Lam said he did not see a need to.

Contrary to what Lam had testified earlier — that Chew had told him around June 23, 2007 that he wanted to quit his job at State Street bank to manage the church’s funds — Chew produced travel records showing he was overseas at the time and suggested the conversation never took place.

He had established his firm, AMAC, months before the church had a pool of funds to invest and Chew questioned why he would quit a well-paying job to manage the church’s funds for S$20,000 a year in fees when he had, for years, been investing for the church at no charge. Lam replied that he had heard from Kong that Chew had been asked to resign by State Street and insisted he and Chew did have that conversation.

Under cross-examination by lawyers for two of the other accused, Tan Ye Peng and Serina Wee, later in the day, Lam confirmed that Wee, the church’s former finance manager, was not at several key meetings, for instance, when the board agreed to the Firna investment. He denied intending or plotting with his fellow accused to cause wrongful loss to the church.

The trial continues.