Kong Hee once said "money is not an issue" and the album must be produced regardless of cost.
in today's proceeding, prosecution brought up a few emails between Kong Hee and the american producer.
when discussing the budget for the album, kong hee said "please do your best to make Sun Ho a top singer, money is not an issue for the investor."
he also said that no cost is too great in creating the album.
prosecution pointed out that various evidence prove that kong hee is not as conservative in controlling the budget as he is claiming.
kong hee rebutted that the only reason he said those things was the understand what is the cost required to make a best selling album.
but the prosecution continued to bring out evidence to show that while kong hee was busying doing the budgeting for the album, he did not check with his team when the Xtron bonds were due.
prosecution claimed that the fact that kong hee was not concerned with the redemption of the bonds was because xtron never intended to pay CHC back for the bonds.
the chinese and english albums released by Sun Ho cost more than $10 million in 5 years! and to reduce the losses, Sun's agent sold the albums to CHC at more than twice the cost price.
prosecution continued to give evidence that Sun's music career was losing money, and kong hee knew from the start that the church has invested in sham bonds that would never be redeemed.
evidence presented shows that between 2003 and 2007, Sun's agent, Xtron lost $9.62million.
additionally, the album released by Sun in 2002, Sunday, lost $690,000.
in 2007, Serina and Tan Ye Peng also discussed in an email to sell the spare stock of "Lonely Travel" to the church.
Serina revealed that each album costs $4.50, but after discussion with Xtron, each album will be sold to CHC at $13.50.
Serina explained that this is to allow Xtron to have enough cash flow to repay some of its debts, including the loans she and kong hee personally gave to Xtron.
prosecution accuse kong hee of knowing sun ho's albums were losing money before the church invested in Xtron bonds.
prosecution also exposed that although publicly it was said that sun's album sales was estimated at 1.5million, in reality, kong hee's team was only estimating the sales to be around 200,000.
according to this estimate, Xtron would not be able to pay CHC back when the bond were due in 2 years. in fact, Serina calculated that it would take up to 10 years to repay the bonds.
Chew Eng Han and Tan Ye Peng's statement:
Moving fund to support Sun Ho
Bonds were not real investments.
Chew and Tan already admitted when questioned that the bonds were not "real" investments, and Xtron was just a means for the church to transfer money to the Crossover project.
Cross examination revealed that Chew has told the CAD that the bonds were not genuine investments.
he said that the church invested in Xtron to ensure that Xtron has enough funds to support Sun Ho's music career, but he also added that the Crossover is supported by the members of the churhc.
Tan's statement also revealed that he told the CAD investigators that the church was making use of Xtron as a means to transfer funds to support Sun Ho's music career.
But Kong Hee disagreed with this.
Church paid: $13.50
prosecution said that Sun Ho's album costs $4.38 each, but the church bought it at $13.50 because Kong Hee and Serina Wee lent money to Xtron for the publicity of the album.
yesterday afternoon, prosecution brought up an email sent from Serina to Tan Ye Peng which mentioned that the church intends to pay $13.50 to buy each copy of "lonely travels".
email also revealed that church spent $447,000 to buy 32,500 copies of the album.
1. he admits that he wants church members to go to the stores to buy the albums to boost sales. prosecution showed an emailed written by Kong Hee, the reason for that is because he wants to use the royalties from the album to build a school in China.
Kong Hee also estimated that for Xtron to break even, between 13,000 and 28,500 copies of the album needs to be sold.
Kong Hee hopes to sell 20,000 copies, but said that there were only 3,000 copies in the market. Kong Hee expressed his concern, because he hopes the members can buy the album from the stores instead of ordering it from the CHC warehouse in order to boost the charts.
2. he admitted yesterday that there are no records showing the board either discussed or approved the purchase of the first set of Xtron bonds.
Kong Hee explained that the investments do not require the approval of the committee because the committee has given Chew Eng Han's investment company the authority to invest up to $25million
3. prosecution said that Sun Ho's albums were losing money and needed external funding to sustain the Crossover. Kong Hee admitted that becaue the publicity costs were high, the album was not self-sustainable, and needed external sources of funding, including allowing Xtron to provide services to teh church to raise the required funds.
kong hee said he and his team would usually ask for foong's opinion, because foong was also a respected elder and understood the vision of the church.
but the prosecution brought out emails that showed that there is a reason why kong hee insisted that his team check with foong when he knew that the auditor in charge was someone else. prosecution thinks thats kong hee wanted to check foong's reaction, and what questions foong would raise so that kong hee and his team knows how to prepare for the actual audits.
kong hee disagrees. he asked if the prosecutors are accusing foong of being part of the conspiracy?
kong hee gave the analogy of the house, saying "if i knew my house was dirty, and there was someone watching me, why would i invite the person in so that he can find out where the dirty spots are? of course i would stay as far from him as possible."
even though he has been on the stand for 12 days, it is estimated that he would be required to be there for at least another week.
,today is the 12th day Kong Hee is on the stand.
today is also the 5th day prosecutors have been cross-examining him since they began last tuesday afternoon. prosecution said that they are unlikely to finish the cross examination by this week.
this case will take a break next week and the prosecution stated that they should not take too much time in the next tranche questioning kong hee but will not say exactly how much more time they would require.
an email sent by kong hee to foong revealed a discussion on how much kong hee spends on clothes.
kong hee said in the email that he knew foong met up with serina and tan ye peng, discussing kong's finances and wanted to explain a few items.
kong hee said that the expenditure on clothes was high because Sun needed to perform on stage and to meet with the press.
"my many suits are for tv recordings, because i have to record programs 7 days a week, and these programs are telecast in 12 channels shown all over asia and australia."
but kong hee did not reveal the actual figures in the email. however he told foong that if foong had any issues, he would be willing to accomodate.
but the emails showed that kong hee and team only asked the auditors which at the items that they are quired to disclose. for example, can they only show that the funds are transferred to AMAC but not where the funds eventually end up?
prosecution claimed that kong hee and team did not ask the auditor if the bonds were legal, similarly, no such questions were asked in the emails between kong hee and his lawyer.
prosecution believes that because it is too obvious to directly transfer the money, kong hee and team thought of using bonds to fund the crossover to prevent revealing too much to the public.
kong hee disagrees.
when he was on the stand, John Lam said that he didn't do his homework when purchasing the Xtron bonds because he believed the Kong Hee's project will succeed. to that, Kong Hee said that regardless or whether John Lam believes in him, John La, should have done his homework.
Lam previously admitted that he would take notes during board meetings, and he did backdate certain meeting minutes. to this kong hee said that lam should not have done that, but kong believes that the meetings were real, because lam would not do anything to deceive the auditors.
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