SINGAPORE — City Harvest Church (CHC) co-founder Sun Ho
never asked how much sales her music albums had chalked up, but was
“under the impression” they sold well, with platinum awards to boot, she
testified this morning (May 19).
It was the first time
the 42-year-old was taking the stand in the trial involving six of the
church’s leaders, including her husband and co-founder Kong Hee.
The question of the “wild fluctuations” in her sales
figures reported by different sources had been put to her by CHC’s
former investment manager Chew Eng Han, who called Ms Ho as a witness.
Kong,
Chew and four others are accused of misusing millions from church
coffers to fund her pop music career and evangelical forays into the
United States market under what is dubbed the Crossover Project.
Before
a full public gallery, Ms Ho said she was working towards “sales of
multi millions” for the US album because the producers in the US were
confident of her. But it was never launched
Referring to
email correspondence between Ms Ho and producers in the US, Chew
questioned how she derived that her first five Mandarin albums could
have sold four million copies — an average of 800,000 per album — when
evidence showed otherwise.
Chew pointed to the financial
statements of her managing company Xtron Productions and a video
recording to church members, which recorded, respectively, sales of
60,000 and 150,000 copies for her first album.
“If that
was the case (that four million albums were sold), Xtron would not have
been scrambling for money for the US album. There was no way you would
have believed that the albums sold four million copies,” contended Chew,
who is conducting his own defence.
It is the
prosecution’s case that the six accused had misused S$24 million in
church building funds to buy sham bonds in two companies to boost Ms
Ho’s career. Another S$26.6 million of church funds were then allegedly
circulated through complex transactions to cover the first sum.
No comments:
Post a Comment