SINGAPORE — The purported success of his wife Ho Yeow Sun’s pop career was but a pack of lies City Harvest Church founder Kong Hee fed to those around him to garner support for her career.
The church’s former investment manager Chew Eng Han threw this and other accusations at Kong, his co-accused and former spiritual mentor, in an all-out assault in court yesterday. He even disputed that, given what he says he now knows, the Crossover Project — using pop music to reach out to non-Christians — was for evangelical purposes.
Seeking to show he was deceived into arranging the financing of Ms Ho’s career, Chew, who is facing criminal charges for misusing church funds, trotted out documents to throw doubt on the magnitude of her success.
Kong, who shared his wife’s chart successes with the church, had “shortchanged the faith of the people in City Harvest Church by telling them that Sun had hit No 1 on her own merits”, he charged.
In fact, her success was propped up by church spending, with hundreds of thousands spent on buying her Chinese albums and another S$30,000 set aside in September 2009 to buy iTunes cards for her English single Fancy Free, Chew argued.
Her Singapore management company Xtron Productions’ creative director Mark Kwan also expressed concern in February 2008 about the size of her “genuine fan base”, he added.
Refuting these, Kong, who was being cross-examined by Chew, said the money spent on iTunes cards was a marketing strategy to create momentum and would not have affected her Billboard chart success, because the chart was not based on sales. And the church had bought the Chinese albums on behalf of “intended recipients”, he added.
Chew also said Kong kept him in the dark about money the church had spent buying Sun’s music, so he could “use (Chew) to help ... do whatever was necessary to help arrange the necessary financing”. But Kong denied this and said Ms Ho’s successes were real.
The “real reason” Ms Ho’s English album was delayed time and again, Chew claimed, was that she and Kong knew her success was “not real”, to which Kong disagreed.
He said Ms Ho’s chart success in Taiwan for her Mandarin albums as well as in the United States for several English singles gave him and the church confidence that her debut English album would be a revenue-generating success. Chew said it was on this belief that he had arranged for the financing of the Crossover Project, through bonds that the church would buy from two firms, including Xtron.
How proceeds from bonds bought by the church were used was what made them a sham — as the prosecution contends — and this was spearheaded by Kong and Tan Ye Peng, the church’s former second in command, Chew argued. He could not have conspired with Kong to cause wrongful loss to the church, given their “totally different” states of mind, he added.
The six leaders are accused of funnelling S$24 million of church building funds into sham bonds for Ms Ho’s career, then misusing another S$26.6 million to cover up the first amount.
Chew also argued yesterday that Kong was dishonest to about 50 church members who put money into an account set up to support Kong’s and Ms Ho’s livelihoods in the missions field. Kong did not tell them about nearly S$440,000 paid to Ms Ho in 2009, for instance, when he met them in 2010 to suggest how much more they could donate to the account. He contended that the Crossover was but Ms Ho’s “personal crossover” and not that of the church.
Chew also took the court through the intense period following Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) investigations into the transactions. Kong had said last week that the investigations from May 2010 scuppered plans for the August 2010 launch of Ms Ho’s album in the US, but Chew said yesterday she could have still put up a sum of money and travelled.
Chew had encouraged Ms Ho to launch the album to recover some of the costs, but Kong said this was “not humanly possible” during such a precarious period and that the church leadership wanted her to be around.
“Perhaps Mr Chew is emotionally a Superman who is able to juggle all the stress and still go on with life like nothing has changed,” Kong retorted.
“If you said that in your evidence, every dollar invested must go back to the church ... if there was expectation for big sums of revenue to come in, wouldn’t the logical, responsible thing to do be to finish up the album and launch it?” Chew questioned.
“Yes, if there was no CAD investigation,” Kong replied.
Chew continues to cross-examine Kong today.
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