20 Mar 2015 – Chew’s re-examination – Album buybacks (MrsLightnFriends: 1 April 2015)

Chew Eng Han began his re-examination on 20 March 2015 with the issue of Sun’s album buybacks, referring to two of the music charts presented by Mr Edwin Tong, counsel for Kong Hee, during his cross-examination of Chew.

SUN*day album

Chew: So I was shown E-116, and the date on E-116 is 6 November 2003. I was cross-referenced to 2D-17, page 1, where it shows the album at the top of the charts. The number 1 position is “SUN*day”, and that’s Sun’s album.
The date of this chart rankings is two rows above that “SUN*day”. It’s 30 November 2002 to 6 June 2002. Therefore, these dates, November 2002 and cross referenced to my E-116, really shows that there’s a one-year gap.
But, your Honour, if you look at E-116 once again, on the lower half of the email, under the heading:

Hanafi’s sponsorship of $1.27m given in 2002 is not enough to cover this as: 1. There was an increase in the publicity expenses & purchase of CDs through APL in the beginning of 2003 for Sunday album.

The way this is worded already implies that from the beginning of 2003, there was a buy-up of albums, and, in fact, it was increased in 2003 from 2002, which only means that in December or November 2002 there was already buy-ups of this “SUN*day” album, and that would correspond to the date on the charts, which it hit number one on 30 November 2002.

Gain album

Chew referred to another music chart showing that the “Gain” album was number 1 on the dates 16 June 2006 to 22 June 2006, and the email dated 9 November 2007 shown by Tong to prove that there was no correlation between the purchase of $80,000 of “Gain” CDs and the number 1 position on the chart.
Chew: Without ability to check deeper, I agreed that there was no correlation between “Gain” CDs hitting the charts, which happened in June 2006, whereas this email is almost one year later, in May 2007.
Chew then referred to an excel sheet on Xtron’s cashflow.
Chew: Your Honour, if we scroll down, there’s — first it starts with “Income” and we go down to “Expenses”. If you scroll down, “Expenses”, you see “USA: Salary & Bonus”, “Other Expenses”. If you scroll down, just under “Other Expenses”, at the last line, it says “Purchase of CDs on behalf”.
In June 2006, there was a purchase of CDs on behalf to the amount of $114,431, and this is the exact month in which “Gain” CDs hit number 1, according to the chart rankings, and two months later actually, in August 2006, there was a purchase of $96,824. So I just want to clarify this point, your Honour, that there was indeed buy-up of albums and that was what caused Sun to hit number 1 on the charts in the same month.