Even before they bought bonds from a church-linked entity, City Harvest Church leaders knew they would not be seeing returns when the bonds were due, argued prosecutors trying to nail six leaders for misuse of church funds today (Aug 26). The church bought bonds worth S$13 million issued by Xtron Productions — which managed the pop music career of Ms Ho Yeow Sun, wife of church founder and accused Kong Hee — from August 2007. But a month before that, three of the accused persons, Serina Wee, Tan Ye Peng and Chew Eng Han, discussed how projected sales of Ms Ho’s debut English album in the United States would only generate a fraction of the revenue needed for Xtron to redeem the bonds. The 200,000 copies expected to be sold would yield only S$2.17 million, and Xtron finance manager Wee said it would take 10 years to redeem the bonds. Under the agreement, the bonds were due to be redeemed in Aug 2009. The prosecution’s case is that the Xtron bonds are a sham through which the church funnelled money to fund Ms Ho’s career, also known as the Crossover Project, which used pop music to evangelise. There was no reasonable prospect of returns when the Xtron bonds matured, and Kong knew it, argued Deputy Public Prosecutor Christopher Ong. He argued that Kong must, in fact, have provided the sales projection, given his role in budgeting for the United States Crossover.
Posted on: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 01:57:39 +0000
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