Monday, September 22, 2014

City Harvest trial: Phone messages of church's finance manager under scrutiny (CNA: 23rd Sept 2014)

SINGAPORE: City Harvest Church's finance manager Sharon Tan was queried about a series of messages on her phone, namely on advance rental given by the church to production house Xtron, in the City Harvest trial on Monday (Sep 22).

It was revealed that the money was used to buy bonds by glassware company, Firna. This was Tan's seventh day on the stand, and she was cross-examined by lead prosecutor for the case Mavis Chionh.

Tan and five other church leaders are accused of using the church's building funds to buy sham bonds in two companies, Firna and Xtron. Tan had copied messages between herself and co-accused, Chew Eng Han, Serina Wee and Tan Ye Peng, onto a document in the memo application on her BlackBerry phone.

Prosecution referred to a message where Tan highlighted a potential problem - that the church's auditor Mr Sim Guan Seng, from accounting firm Baker Tilly, was handling the accounts of Xtron, and so would know about the related transactions.

It is the prosecution's case that Tan was trying to hide that advance rental from the church had been channelled into the redemption of Firna bonds. However, Tan maintained that the auditors would still have knowledge about the transactions as they had access to both the accounting books of Xtron and the church.

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