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Tag Archives: marc ronez

An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 6)

27 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by Nailed Truth in C3 & Pringles Associations

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

CHC, Chew Eng Han, City Harvest Church, crossover, crossover project, John Lam, Kong Hee, marc ronez, Ronez, Sun Ho, Tan Ye Peng

Kong Hee says about CHC, Phil Pringle and the C3 Church Movement,

“You can’t talk about City Harvest Church without talking about C3. Or Christian City Church. You know Pastor Phil has been there for me; praying with me; encouraging me; discipling me; telling me how to do the work of the ministry; taught me how to collect an offering; how to give an altar call; how to build a church; build a team. So Pastor Phil, from the depth of my heart, for Sun and myself, we wouldn’t be where we are today without you and Pastor Chris. Let’s give Pastor Phil and Pastor Chris a big clap.” – Kong Hee, Kong Hee, Session 8: (00:24), Presence Conference 2010.

The above quote is something to think about while reading the below article. Before reading this sixth article, make sure you have read his earlier articles:

An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 1)
An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 2)
An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 3)
An Inisghtful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 4)
An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 5)

Marc Ronez is back! Here is Ronez’s sixth article analysing the CHC situation:

City Harvest Case part 6: The Smog of the Crossover Financing

The revelations about the large sums of money (tens of millions of dollars) used liberally to finance Sun Ho’s failed attempt to breakthrough on the U.S. music scene and about her carefree, luxury lifestyle, have shocked many City Harvest Church members, the christians community at large and even the wider public. Reading through online forums, it is clear that many people felt that the amounts spent were extravagant and questioned what this “U.S. pop star adventure” had really got to do with the Christian evangelisation project it proclaimed to be.

The important questions we should ask and aim to answer here are:

– Who actually paid for the Crossover Project?

– How was the financing practically arranged? 

– Why was it done this way?

The financing of the Crossover project is one of the most important issues we have to examine in my series of posts about the CHC case because this is where we can possibly confirm or disprove most clearly the deception and fraudulent intent of the CHC leaders being prosecuted. This issue of financing is at the center of the prosecution case in the ongoing trial as without it, there would be no case to be answered. So let’s now explore the key issues in detail.

1 – WHO paid for the Crossover Project?

From the COC Report, the CAD investigations, the trial proceedings and even by the own admissions of the defendants including Pastor Kong Hee himself, it has been confirmed very CLEARLY that Sun Ho music career and U.S. Crossover had essentially been financed by CHC church funds.

This is now a fact recognised by everybody. However according to the prosecution, this very fact had, for many years, been kept under cover by the CHC leadership and actually the prosecuted CHC leaders are today “in the dock” precisely because they have “deliberately schemed to conceal the movement and use of church funds [for the crossover] from church members”.

Indeed from the facts and testimonies brought to light during the court proceeding and cross examinations, it has been revealed that the general body of the Church members were actually led to believe that Sun Ho’s crossover was NOT financed by the church. As Chew Eng Han (CHC former investment manager) pointed out during his cross-examination of Pastor Kong Hee a few days ago, the Senior Pastor of CHC apparently preferred to keep the Crossover funding “indirect and discreet“. For many years, Pastor Kong Hee never publicly mentioned anything about any kind of Church Financing for Sun Ho’s U.S. Crossover. Quite on the contrary in fact, as with much fanfare, he had claimed in 2005 in front of the church congregation that Sun Ho had been “invited” to the United States by a major music record company who offered her a US 5 million dollar contract. On hearing the news, the church members cheered with the comforting belief  that this was miracle from God who was opening doors for Sun Ho and a clear proof that God was supporting her Crossover to the secular music world. Everybody listening also naturally assumed that this contract would finance her salary and the production of her future U.S. singles and albums. Over the years, Pastor Kong Hee repeatedly claimed that his wife was a pop star, that she was very successful in her music career collecting many accolades and awards in the process. He even joked on occasions that she was making a lot more more money than him. He had also stressed that while Sun Ho was “shining for Christ” in the music world, she had officially been released from ministry, and hence her music career was her own business completely independent from the Church. Theofficial story CHC members were fed with was that she had largely financed her music career and  U.S. breakthrough attempt with what she was earning from her recording contract and royalties from her previous albums and singles. While in the church, some members knew that the church was providing some form of support to Sun Ho’s crossover and sometimes were even involved in it, very few were really aware of the full extent of this support  and most members did not bother to ask any questions for the reasons explained in my previous posts  “City Harvest Case Part 2 – If there is a Fraud what would be the Motives?”  and  “City Harvest Case Part 3 – The Opportunity Makes The Thief“, relating to PRESSURES and OPPORTUNITIES factors in unethical decision-making.

Unfortunately the reality was very different from what was then the “official” CHC storyline. Sun Ho’s business activities were not doing so well, her royalties from previous albums and singles were drying up and in fact, her earlier musical successes had been “grossly exaggerated“ according to Chew Eng Han who pointed out and provided documentary evidences to prove that “all the while Church money was spent to boost Sun Ho’s CD sales and her position on the music charts“, furthermore CHC members were encouraged to buy her albums and even to buy more than one copy, in fact as many copies as possible. They were told by their cell group leaders that they could give the additional CDs to bless their families and friends. It was also revealed during cross-examination of former CHC board member John Lam that CHC had spent about half a million dollars buying at least 32,000 copies of Sun Ho’s unsold CDs supposedly to bless other congregations around Asia with Sun Ho’s music. Did these congregations really asked for her music? Finally the famous US 5 million dollar recording contract offer mentioned above actually never materialised simply because it never existed in the first place except in the fertile imagination of Pastor Kong Hee as explained in my previous post “City Harvest Case part 5: CHC’s Crossover or Sun Ho’s Crossover“. Hence with not enough money of her own to finance her American music adventure, it must have been quite clear from the beginning for the CHC leadership that for Sun Ho’s crossover to materialise, it had to be financed by the church. That meant with the money received from its faithful members.

 2 – HOW was the Crossover financing arranged?

From the COC Report, the CAD investigations and the trial proceedings, it has been further revealed that the financing of the Crossover was arranged using a variety of indirect and often rather complicated schemes. I would list the key ones as follows:

1. The Xtron Productions & Firna SGD 24 million Bonds,
2. The SGD 3.6 million Multi-Purpose Account (“MPA”),
3. The CHCKL (CHC Kuala Lumpur)  SGD 2.1 million “Love gift”.

Let’s examine now the various financing channels more closely in order to answer the HOW question:

CHANNEL 1: The Xtron Productions & Firna Bonds

Instead of trying to get a strong mandate from Church members in order to be able to invest directly Church funds into the Crossover project, the prosecuted CHC leaders decided that CHC would do it indirectly by investing in Bonds issued by Xtron productions and Firna using the monies from the building fund. Like for any Bond mechanism, an interest and a maturity date for the principal repayment was agreed between the parties involved. Then from 2007 to 2009 S$ 13 million and S$ 11 million (a total of S$ 24 million) were transferred from the church building fund  in several tranches as part of the bonds purchase agreement with those 2 companies. But those were not ordinary bonds. The catch was that Xtron had been set up primarily to organise the financing of and manage Sun Ho’s music career. And Firna belongs to Indonesian businessman and long-time CHC member, Wahju Hanafi, who had agreed to support the crossover project. So in order to raise the necessary funds, Xtron and Firna had issued a series of bonds that were then bought by CHC, meaning that effectively Xtron & Firna took loans from CHC. The proceeds of the bonds was then used to finance the various expenses related to the crossover project and Sun Ho’s music actitivities.

The problem is that the COC and prosecution consider that the SGD 24 millions were ILLEGALLY diverted from the church building fund.  According to COC and prosecution, the deception comes from the fact that the transactions were presented as regular bond investments and that apart from the persons incriminated, the other board members, the executive members and the ordinary members were not told of the actual purpose of the bonds which was to fund Sun Ho attempt to breakthrough on the U.S. music scene. Furthermore the prosecution and trial proceedings have also highlighted the complete lack of independence of Xtron from CHC and the multiple problematic conflict of interests in the management of Xtron.

The COC and prosecution also claimed that when the external auditor started to raise difficult questions about the above mentioned Xtron & Firna bonds, the prosecuted leaders rushed to arrange another transfer of about SGD 26 million to make it look like the bond had been properly redeemed, hence the so-called “round-tripping”.

The prosecuted CHC leaders and  City Harvest Church have disputed the allegations that the church was cheated of any money, claiming that the Board of CHC had the full authority to decide how to best invest the available church funds (including the monies of the building funds) and that all decisions were made following proper procedures further claiming that eventually all the sums invested had been repaid in full to the church with the agreed interest.

So did anything wrong happen? Was it illegal? Well considering that there is a trial going on precisely looking at the legality of those transactions, the judge will obviously have the final say about what is legal and what is not. However based on the information available, I would like to make a few observations:

– Bonds are just financial instruments. They are like any tools. You can put them to a good or a bad use. So we should not blame the tools, it is the users who are responsible. The purpose of a bond is to allow organisations who need funds to be able to borrow them from the organisations who have excess cash and wish to invest that cash to get a return. While usually considered safer than investing in shares because of the fixed interest rate and the commitnent to return the capital in full after a fixed term, bonds are not without risks. There is always the possibility that the company issuing the bond could go bankrupt and hence being unable to repay the principal leaving the investors without recourse “naked in the cold”.

– Firna & Xtron bonds should have been categorised as high risk (i.e. junk) bonds. First as exposed during trial proceedings Firna was having cash flow issues & Xtron seems to have been a financially weak and troubled organisation. Second the proceeds of the bonds were to be used for an extremely high risk project, i.e. launching the career of a modestly successful Asian pop artist in the U.S.

– Furthermore, it was mentioned during the trial proceedings that the “interest rate that Firna was paying to CHC was lower than what the company would have been able to get from banks“. So here we find out that not only CHC was investing in “Junk bonds” but the church did not even get the high interests than usually compensate for the high risk taken. In fact, it appears that CHC was shortchanged with a lower than market interest rate.

– Another “twist” in the CHC case, is that there was a complete confusion of roles between the borrower Xtron and the lender CHC. The trial proceedings and cross-examinations have highlighted the near complete lack of independence of Xtron from CHC: First the directors of Xtron were handpicked by Pastor Tan Ye Peng and Pastor Kong Hee and were insiders and loyal followers of the CHC Senior Pastor. Second Serina Wee, former CHC finance Manager, appears to have had “her hands” in the accounts of all 3 organisations CHC, Firna and Xtron and was reporting directly to Pastor Tan and Pastor Kong Hee. Finally most of, if not all, the important decisions about the Crossover were made directly by Pastor Kong Hee and his wife Sun Ho and were then rubber stamped by CHC and Xtron quite LITERALLY as it has been revealed during cross examination that actual rubber stamps of key signatories were created and used.

– Chew Eng Han, in his role of CHC investment manager, came up with and arranged the bonds scheme as a solution to the desire of Pastor Kong Hee  (Senior Pastor of CHC) to keep the funding of the Crossover “indirect and discreet”. Hence the issue was not about raising money for the Crossover, rather it was about transferring it quietly from the  building fund. Based on the above mentioned considerations, we can conclude that the way the bonds were arranged  constitutes clearly a perveteduse of the bond mechanism.

There are at least 2 other financing channels that while not part of the current prosecution case are worth mentioning as they may also shed some light on the intend of the parties involved.

CHANNEL 2: The Multi-Purpose Account (“MPA”)

The existence of the MPA, a private fund that was set up and was used to pay for Sun Ho and Kong Hee private expenditures between 2006 and 2010, was first exposed to light by the COC report in 2010.  More recently under Cross-examination by Chew Eng Han, Pastor Kong Hee was given an opportunity to explain himself about it and he declared: “The MPA was set up by some of Xtron donors in 2006 to support Sun and my livelihood in the mission field because at the end of 2005 both of us went off church payroll.” He also added that ” secondarily it was set up for us to use it for Crossover-related expenses…” Initially 28 couples and a few individuals were approached and enlisted as MPA donors.

First, we may wonder what were really Pastor Kong Hee expenses in the mission field?  This a fair question as it has been revealed during the trial proceedings that his business class flight expenses were mostly paid by the church, his luxury hotel accommodation expenses were either paid by CHC or by the church inviting him, his large support staff and equipment were provided by CHC and finally, quite a number of mission trips consisted of   lucrative paid preaching engagements in other mega churches. Sun Ho on her side, was paid by Xtron for “her efforts” for the Crossover. So did they really need more money?

Second, according to the COC report, a total of S$3.6 millions were collected through the MPA fund over a three and half years period. This translates to about S$1 million per year to share between Sun Ho and Kong Hee. A more than substantial “compensation” for “going off the church payroll”. The actual use of the funds while supposedly dedicated to the crossover project and other mission trips was in practice completely non-transparent and left to the entire discretion of Pastor Kong Hee and his wife.  In essence they did whatever they wanted with the money and did not have to be accountable to anybody.

From testimonies received from various MPA donors, it appears that Pastor Kong Hee did not just wait for donors to give, he proactively approached them to “encourage” them to give more. In his cross examination of Pastor Kong Hee, Chew Eng Han highlighted an incident that in his opinion, demonstrates both Pastor Kong Hee eagerness to collect always more money as well as his willingness to use deceptive meansto do so.

Chew Eng Han mentioned a meeting that was held with the MPA donors in 2010 where Pastor Kong Hee showed them a spreadsheet aimed to demonstrate that the givings received from the donors were not enough to cover his and Sun’s expenses. The spreadsheet showed a deficit of about half a million dollars for 2009. The donors were then given a pledge form and strongly encouraged to give more.

The problem, according to Chew Eng Han, is that the total amount of donations collected of S$512,000 that was mentioned in the spreadsheet for 2009 was minus of royalties and salaries paid to Sun. Hence the true amount collected was in fact S$952,000. Hence CEH claimed that Pastor Kong Hee misled the MPA donors to think that the collections amount was much lower than what it was. This misrepresentation is indeed very troubling and we can speculate that they were possibly 2 reasons to explain it. Pastor Kong Hee may have wanted:

1. to make the MPA donors feel bad about the “low” collection amount and the deficit and compel them to give more

2. to hide the extravagant salary and royalties (S$ 400,000) given to Sun Ho that he was apparently was finding hard to justify

Another issue highlighted in the COC report is the claim that the donors enlisted in the MPA were told that they could “transfer their contributions originally meant for the Church’s building fund to the MPA and hence they ceased or reduced their regular tithes to the church after they contributed funds to the MPA”. This claim was confirmed by direct testimonies of MPA donors. COC report further claims that apart from the small group of donors, the existence of the MPA was concealed to the rest of the Church’s members and great care put in keeping it this way.

This is a highly problematic point here as this would mean that the creation of the MPA directly and negatively impacted the level of contributions of the MPA donors to the tithes and to the building fund. In other words, form a practical perspective, Pastor Kong Hee and Sun Ho did not really go off church payroll as without the MPA, the funds they received would have gone to the church. So in essence, the funds they got from the MPA for their living expenses, i.e. “salaries”  were indirectly taken from the church. But this time without in forms of control or scrutiny on the amount and use they could make of it. A much “better deal” for Pastor Kong Hee and Sun Ho. Definitely NOT a good one for the church.

To conclude, while some CHC members and the wider public may be shocked by this MPA account (and the large sums involved), we should stress that from a legal point of view, people can donate their money to whoever they wish to, be the tithes, the building fund or the MPA or anything else and they do not need to publicize what is essentially a private transaction. While the attempt of the CHC leaders to hide the MPA from the rest of the CHC members shows their embarrassment and clearly raise some serious ethical questions. Based on the information currently available, it is hard to find a really solid legal ground for the prosecution to charge the CHC leaders based on the MPA transactions. We need to keep in mind that something unethical may not necessarily be illegal. The MPA donors themselves would have a better case and could try to sue Pastor Kong Hee and Sun Ho if they have given or increase their donations due the misreprsentation of facts mentioned in this section.

Finally CHANNEL 3: The CHCKL ‘Love Gift’ or ‘Transfer’

Another way the CHC leadership used to finance the crossover project was to encourage financial support, i.e. “love gifts” from other churches with whom CHC has established friendly relationships, partnerships and even affiliations. Over the years, many churches have contributed financially to CHC projects including the crossover project. Similarly CHC has contributed financially to many other churches’ important projects such as building funds and so on.

The first issue here is again related to the fact that the use of the funds provided by the “love gifts” has been completely non-transparent and left to the entire discretion of Pastor Kong Hee and Sun Ho. While supposedly dedicated to the crossover project, there was in practice no ways for the donors to check how the money was used and no accountability whatsoever.

The second issue is that while these “give and receive” contributions between churches are a natural part of relationship and partnership building efforts, there is always a risk of abuse when  they become formalised, transactional and conditional, i.e. “I give you this ONLY if you give me that..”

According to the COC report, some of the prosecuted CHC leaders have crossed the red line when between December 2007 and May 2010, some S$2.1 millions from CHC were channeled to the U.S. crossover project via an affiliated church in Malaysia (City Harvest Church Kuala Lumpur, CHCKL). In the CHC accounts, the funds transferred are recorded as a donation to the building fund of CHCKL. However the COC report claims that the same funds were actually then transmitted by CHCKL to support the Crossover Project in the United States under the guise of a love gift. The COC investigations apparently revealed that clear instructions were given via email by some of the accused CHC Leaders in Singapore to CHCKL to transfer the so-called “donations” to the Crossover in the U.S. disguised as “love gifts” and hence exposing the true purpose of the original “donations”.

If there is clear written evidences that support the claims of the COC report, this would be a very serious accusation as it would give another clear evidence of deception and wrongdoing from the persons involved in the transactions. But without such evidences, it would difficult to prove anything as these reciprocal “give and take” transactions are actually quite common place between.  While we may speculate about the intentions of the parties involved when we can observe those “give and take transactions”, it is hard to prove the fraudulent intent without clear and documented instructions that reveal that actual intent.

3 – WHY was the Crossover Financing arranged in the indirect, complicated and non-transparentmanner described in the previous section?

It is worth to note that the key issue under scrutiny at the CHC trial, i.e. the financing of the Crossover, has been carefully eluded by CHC leaders in their public statements. The fact that investigations and then the court case were underway has repeatedly been used as an excuse to diffuse requests for more information and more disclosure on the Crossover financing. When the public and church members asked questions about the financing, the standard CHC leadership’s response has been to say, “Please understand that we cannot disclose more about issues that are under scrutiny in this trial. Do not make pre-judgment. Let our case be heard in court at the right place and time.“

So well now finally, it is the time and actually the last opportunity for Pastor Kong Hee and the other prosecuted CHC leaders to tell their version of the truth before court judgment is passed and I would like to ask them a few simple questions:

– Why use various and often complicated schemes to arrange the financing for the Crossover project?
– Why not do it directly and transparently?
– Why keep church members in the dark and even misleading them for many years about the financing of the Crossover project?

As already mentioned, Pastor Kong Hee admitted during cross examination that he preferred to keep the funding “indirect and discreet” despite Chew Eng Han’s and fellow CHC board member John Lam’s suggestion for a direct and open funding for the crossover project.

When asked during cross examination what were the reasons behind his resistance to open and direct funding of the Crossover project and his preference for indirect and discreet financing arrangements, Pastor Kong Hee,  provided over time essentially 3 lines of reasoning to justify his choices:

Objective 1: Protect the church financial position

As technically the church did not directly finance Sun Ho’s Crossover, as the funds were invested into Corporate Bonds that were supposed to be repaid in full at a certain date with interest. Hence they can claim that no actual money was spent on the Crossover project from the Church, that there was only profits to be earned from the interests received. The Board could rationalize that they were prudent with this approach avoiding the Church to be exposed to the possible losses resulting from Sun Ho’s albums failure to generate sales. In such a case, the losses would have to be covered by Xtron and Firna.

Critical view: The problem is that protection can be an illusion if the risk of borrowers going bankrupt is high and hence are unable to repay the principal, the church would loose all the money invested. On the other hand, despite taking most of the financial risks, with a bond mechanism, CHC would only have received the unrest income and would not have benefited from the upside in case Sun Ho’s album had been successful. In other words, profits were to be privatised for Sun Ho’s benefits, while losses would have ultimately to be covered by the church and its members.

Objective 2: Protect the Crossover Project

Pastor Kong Hee said he felt the Crossover project would fail if Sun Ho was seen as being openly backed by a church. He was concerned that she could be categorised as a Gospel Singer or that exposing too openly her christian evangelization agenda would generate tremendous opposition in the non-christian world. Particularly in countries like China, a Christian label would have been a non-starter. And even in the U.S., there are quite a lot of negative views about religions.  Hence Sun Ho had to go “undercover” and while she was indirectly financed by the church, she had to keep quiet about it. She was supposed to be a secular singer, singing secular songs, on secular labels. Furthermore people could have the “misconception” that “Sun’s popularity was not real”, and that the “church was using its funds to promote one of its members’ career”, he said.

Critical view: The issue was not about pasting a Christian label on Sun Ho’s forehead , advertising on it.  But ensure a proper and strong mandate from the people who provided the financing, at the very least, theentire board and the Executive member should have been approached to approve the financing of the project and the ordinary members should have been informed.

Objective 3: Protect the church members’ peace of mind

The Roland Poon affair in 2003 with the allegations that CHC was using its funds to promote the senior pastor’s wife music career subjected the church to massive amount of criticisms and attacks from the media and the general public. While Roland Poon retracted his accusations and apologised,  the whole event created a lot of disstressing turmoils and confusions in the church. As Pastor Kong Hee shared in court, “the reality of life is such that you cannot manage and control what’s happening in the public domain. So it was more a wake-up call for us, that we’ve got to be very careful what we share.”  Pastor Kong Hee felt it was important to protect church members from such negative environment in the future. Hence moving forward, the board members decided that the church should not directly financially support the Crossover project and should be more careful about what information can be shared publicly with the church members about the crossover project. Therefore revealing  publicly that Sun Ho’s crossover would now be funded indirectly after having just made representations that “no church funds had been used to support Sun Ho’s career” would invite another round of unwanted scrutiny and negative reactions.

Critical view: This line of reasoning is hard to understand as precisely after the Roland Poon affair, CHC should have wanted to build and get a very strong mandate from its members for the Crossover project. And if they could not get the mandate they should not have done it. It is very demeaning Pastor Kong Hee to assume that the church members are so weak that they will break and run away under the weight of external criticisms aboutCHC leadership’s actions if those criticisms are not justified. And it is wrong to deceive church members about the actual use of the money the Church has received from them for a specific purpose i.e. acquiring a new church building. There is not peace of mind in deception.

An Hidden Agenda?

As a risk management and governance practitioner, I have investigated a wide range of fraud cases over the years, and based on my experience,  when I observe the diversity and complexity of some of the schemes used to finance the Crossover project, this is a “Red flag” and a source of concern for me. Let me explain why in simple terms. When you need or want to finance something and you have the choice between 2 approaches to do it:

1. a more simple and transparent financing solution such as openly and directly raising or at least allocating funds for the crossover project with all the relevant stakeholder’s kept in the loop and,

2. a complicated and indirect way such as investing in multiple bonds with specially created and controlled or friendly partners’ companies, creating special private accounts to receive funds from various parties , and so on while excluding many important stakeholders from the loop.

And you choose the complicated and indirect way, it usually means that you have an hidden agenda. There is something you want to be able to do away from prying eyes. This is what appear to have happened in the CHC case, as what the CHC leaders have done is to practically create an organisational BLACK BOX.  As the name indicate, the purpose of a “black box” is to prevent any form of unwanted scrutiny by allowing the people inside it to conceal their activities from external parties. The practical key objectives are to ensure:

1. Lack of Control: Prevent important stakeholders from being able to CONTROL what is happening in the black box as formal decisions authority has been delegated to the people in charge of the black box.

2. Lack of Transparency: Prevent important stakeholders from being able to KNOW what is happening inside the black box as information is intentionally not shared or misleading, or the situation is too complicated to have the full picture of what is going on. For example, Sun Ho apparently received large amounts of money for her living expenses from at least three different  sources: Xtron, the MPA and the CHCKL gift. People aware of one source may not have been kept in the loop about the other sources.

Within the black box, Pastor Kong Hee, Sun Ho and other CHC leaders could use the money received at their entire discretion with little control and no accountability to anyone. The danger is that without scrutiny and accountability, the people inside the black box will be tempted to take advantage of the situation for their own benefits as I will explain in the next section.

Using CHC to create a Private Cash Distributor

The COC report, the CAD investigations, the court proceedings and in particular the cross examinations have shed some very unsavory light on a range of practices and a system that we could characterise as a form of “Cash Distributor system”for the benefits of a few private parties.  I will illustrate it focussing on the case of Pastor Kong Hee because while many others were involved, he is the leader of the Church and hence holds ultimate responsibility for the system that was put in place.

When Pastor Kong Hee decided to go off Church payroll in 2005, declaring that he would by faith rely on his private business activities which included royalties from his book writing, CDs, revenues from his retailing business and so on, church members applauded with respectful deference as they interpreted his decision of working for the body of Christ without salary as an act self-sacrifice, a selfless commitment to God’s kingdom. In fact, many members were worried for him and wondering how he was going to be able to pay for his living expenses. They should not have worried at all… As the COC report, CAD investigations and the trial proceedings have exposed a web of practices that Pastor Kong Hee engaged into that more than compensated for his “loss” of a fixed salary and shed a very different light on what may have been his true motivations for going off the church payroll.  While Pastor Kong Hee was not anymore drawing a salary from the church, he was in total control both spiritual and managerial of the church he had founded. He was to use this situation to his advantage and with a little bit of creativity, vast amount of money was soon going to start to flow to him from multiple directions. Let me just describe some of the schemes that have been exposed during by the COC reports and  during the trial proceedings:

1 – You need to sell more books, CDs, DVDs?

First get your church to buy your books, CDs, DVDs and so on to distribute them as teaching materials for your members and to bless other churches. Second, strongly encourage your  church members to buy your books, CDs, DVDs and so on for their own edification. Make sure you get hefty royalties above market rate through the use of controlled distribution channels such as the Church affiliated bookstore (Example: Pastors Kong Hee and Tan Ye Peng Literature at Attributes & then Ink Room)

2 – You need money for your living expenses?

Encourage and collect “Love gifts” from some of your faithful members who would feel honored to support the honorary pastor or any other pastors in the church. Focus on the richest and most loyal members. (example: the MPA account)

3 – You have a personal self-serving dream?

Package your personal self-centered dream as a people focused evangelisation project and get the financial support from your own church and from other friendly churches from around the world  (example: The Crossover project). Make sure you share some of the benefits with your supporters, so that you can ensure their long-term loyalty. Also help your partners’ churches too with your church’s money for their own projects as reciprocity is key to long-term success.

4- You want more money for whatever reasons such as buying luxury condos?

Develop trusted relationships with other mega churches leaders and arrange reciprocal invitations that involve highly compensated (Love gifts again) speaking and preaching gigs (example: some of Kong Hee’s and other top church Leaders’ speaking and preaching engagements around the world)

5 – You want to be a guaranteed successful Entrepreneur?

Start a a private commercial company in an area of interest for your church. You can try many different activities: start a book store, a coffee place, a production company, a design company, a catering company, a cleaning company, an event management company, an investment company, an accounting company and so on so that you can multiply to potential sources of income. You do not need to worry about any competition as you will become a privileged service provider for your growing and very rich church despite charging sometimes higher than market fees. Then make sure you give some of these companies  to your supporters so that you can ensure their long-term loyalty (example: Attributes, Advante, AMAC and so on).

6- You want to save cost in your private business?

When you start your private commercial company or business, give it a Christian Twist so that you make into a church ministry work and minimise your running cost by using church staff and church members volunteers at minimal or even no cost to operate your own private business (for example Pastor Kong Hee’s speaking gigs around Asia, Attributes, Xtron and Skin Couture shops and so on).

The above list shows that the problematic practices in CHC go way beyond isolated incidents and are in fact part of an institutionalised system to turn CHC into a cash distributor for the private benefit of the few parties who controlled the system. To conclude, through this series on the CHC case, I have highlighted first in my post “City Harvest Case Part 2 – If there is a Fraud what would be the Motives?” the personal factors, that could have “motivated” the prosecuted leaders to engage into committing the unethical or even fraudulent acts they are accused of. Then in my post  “City Harvest Case Part 3 – The Opportunity Makes The Thief“, the spotlight was put on how through carefully oriented teaching, one-way communication, selective information disclosure, strong peer pressures and church leaders’ close supervision of church cell groups, Pastor Kong Hee and other CHC leaders worked hard and effectively to create a culture of OBEDIENCE and CONFORMITY in City Harvest church. This coupled with intently weakly designed corporate governance rules and a poor oversight control structure, led CHC to become an environment very VULNERABLE and in fact FAVOURABLE for possible unethical or even fraudulent activities by providing multiple OPPORTUNITIES to “break the rules” and the ability to CONCEAL their activities. In this post, we have demonstrated that the prosecuted CHC leaders have taken advantage of the opportunities created by the CHC system for their own self-interested benefits.

In my Last post “City Harvest Case part 7: The Fruits of the Crossover Tree“, I will conclude the series by examining the impact of the Crossover project on the Church, its members, the Christian community and the wider public to find out whether the Crossover project yielded positive results that might have made it worth it in the end. And we will critically analyse whether “the end justify the means” or not. So keep on the look out for my final post on the CHC case.

Source: Marc Ronez, City Harvest Case part 6: The Smog of the Crossover Financing, The Risk Management Paradox, , 25/08/2014. (Accessed 28/08/2014.)

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An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 5)

19 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by Nailed Truth in Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

analysis, c3, c3 church, CHC, Christian City Church, church, city harvest, copy, crossover, Ho Yeow Sun, Kong Hee, marc ronez, Phil Pringle, Pringle, scandal, six charged, Sun Ho

Kong Hee says about CHC, Phil Pringle and the C3 Church Movement,

“You can’t talk about City Harvest Church without talking about C3. Or Christian City Church. You know Pastor Phil has been there for me; praying with me; encouraging me; discipling me; telling me how to do the work of the ministry; taught me how to collect an offering; how to give an altar call; how to build a church; build a team. So Pastor Phil, from the depth of my heart, for Sun and myself, we wouldn’t be where we are today without you and Pastor Chris. Let’s give Pastor Phil and Pastor Chris a big clap.” – Kong Hee, Session 8: (00:24), Presence Conference 2010.

The above quote is something to think about while reading the below article by Marc Ronez. Before reading this fifth article, make sure you have read his earlier articles:

An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 1)
An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 2)
An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 3)
An Inisghtful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 4)

Here is Ronez’s fifth article analysing the CHC situation:

City Harvest Case part 5: CHC’s Crossover or Sun Ho’s Crossover

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Marc Ronez

As explained in my previous post “City Harvest Case Part 4 – Can You Rationalize a Crime to be a Benefit to Society?“, the CHC investigations and trial have turned the spotlights on  a number of very questionable decisions and practices made by the CHC Leadership in relation to the Crossover project. While according to the CHC Crossover website, it was supposed to be an Evangelization project using secular pop music as a mean to reach out to “people who would never think of setting a foot in a church”, the Commissioner of Charities (CoC) and the Prosecution view the situation very differently. From their perspectives, the essential purpose of the CHC Crossover project was to provide the funds necessary to finance the costs associated with the launch of Sun Ho’s secular musical career in Hollywood (See links to articles about the CHC case). Looking at the facts that have been uncovered so far, it seems indeed clear, as already discussed in my post “City Harvest Case Part 2 – If there is a Fraud what would be the Motives?”, that Sun Ho has been the main “beneficiary” of the Crossover project and of the funds allocated to it. Hence in this post, the focus will be on some of the very troubling questions that Sun Ho and her role in the crossover project – has raised as follows:

  • Question 1: Why was Sun Ho chosen as the main focus and only vehicle for the Crossover project?
  • Question 2: How does Sun Ho’s U.S. music breakthrough attempt fit with the objectives of the Crossover project?
  • Question 3: How does Sun Ho’s public statements and lifestyle in the U.S. align with the objectives of the Crossover project?
  • Question 4: How does Sun Ho’s U.S. stage personae fit with the objectives of the Crossover project?

To provide a balance perspective on each of the questions stated above, we will analyze them systematically to find out the following:

  1. Ethical Dissonances: Why the decisions and behaviors of the CHC leadership can create ethical dissonance issues? What is questionable about these issues?
  2. CHC leadership’s rationale: How were these issues rationalized by the CHC leadership in order to make their decisions and behaviors acceptable by church members and even to win their support?
  3. Critical Perspective: What are the potential weaknesses in the argumentation used by the CHC leadership to rationalize their decisions and behaviors?

Question1: Why was Sun Ho chosen as the main focus and only vehicle for the Crossover project?

1. Why should this be considered an ethical dissonance issue?

From a secular perspective, there is a basic conflict of interests situation in this case. The decision to “select” Sun Ho as the only vehicle for the crossover project among all the thousands of CHC church members is questionable, considering the simple fact that she is the wife of the senior pastor who was making the decision. The conflict of interests will cast some doubts on the motivations of Pastor Kong Hee. The suspicion is reinforced when you note that City Harvest Church has no lack of spiritually minded singing talents such as Annabel Soh, Sendy Bolang and Alison Yap. Did Sun Ho have necessarily the best voice, look, creative talent and story for the “pop star” job scope?

2. What is the CHC Leadership’s Rationale on this issue?

Pastor Kong Hee repeatedly claimed during church services that the command about Sun Ho’s crossover came directly from God Himself, that he and his wife carefully confirmed it through months of prayers and the counsel from spiritual mentors. In particular, Pastor Kong stressed that they had received supporting prophetic words from Pastor Phil Pringle (currently Senior Pastor of C3 Australia and advisory pastor of CHC) as well as by other prophets, prophetess and even “signs and wonders” such as the many thousands of souls that were saved during her concerts in Taiwan in 2003. All this “proving” that it was indeed a mission that God had given to her. Pastor Kong Hee concluded that in the end, he and his wife had no choice, but to “surrender to the Will of God” and accept the mission.

3. Critical Perspective on the CHC leadership’s argumentation

Whether you are religious or not, a bit of skepticism is not just welcome, but in fact necessary to be able to ask some very simple and reasonable questions to leaders. The purpose is to ensure an appropriate level of accountability from the leadership. Ensuring accountability is indeed a very important principle in risk management. The accountability principle works for everybody’s benefits, including the leaders’ themselves by establishing check and balance mechanisms, preventing them from loosing touch with the reality of the principles that are supposed to guide their decisions and actions.

Did Pastor Kong Hee and Sun Ho loose touch with reality in the CHC case? In this regard, I have already mentioned above that it may sound quite self-serving for Pastor Kong Hee and Sun Ho to claim that God made the decision. So let’s explore this issue a bit further by asking more questions..

CHC cash Down-the-DrainAssuming that God indeed made the decision to choose Sun Ho as the vehicle for the Crossover, then how much money do you think, God would need to help her to make a breakthrough on the U.S. pop music scene? Considering that God is almighty and can do anything, He would certainly help her through signs and wonders. It does not mean that Sun Ho would not have to work hard to succeed, but God could and would open doors miraculously at critical times. However from what we can observe in Sun Ho’s case, it seems unfortunately that 7 years of trying very hard with 3 different top producers and spending at least SGD 24 millions  were NOT enough to succeed… Shouldn’t that raise some serious questions about whether God was really supporting this project?

With that in mind, how to justify the almost EXCLUSIVE focus on Sun Ho for the most critical Evangelization project of the church? If the Pop Music reach out strategy is really as effective as claimed by CHC leaders, then why support only one singing talent and not 2 or 3 or even more in order to reach a wider audience? It should have been possible to spread the SGD 24 millions to support a lot more artists or artistic projects in the church instead of just one. Furthermore risk management best practices would usually recommend “not putting all your eggs in the same basket“. It is often both more prudent and yet effective to spread your risks so as to minimize your exposure to failure, while at the same time to maximise your chances of success. Church members should certainly question the wisdom of the decision to choose Sun Ho as the vehicle for the Crossover project from both an ethical and “business” point of views. According to the prosecution, extravagant amount of Church members’ money was invested in Sun Ho’s Crossover and the question is, was it invested appropriately?

Question 2: How does Sun Ho’s U.S. music breakthrough attempt fit with the objectives of the Crossover project?

1. Why should this be considered an ethical dissonance issue?

Pastor Kong Hee has repeatedly shared during services the vision given to him by God that with CHC, he was to lead the way for a Christian renewal in Asia. So the obvious question is why did Sun Ho ended up in the U.S. for 5 years (from 2005 to 2010), trying to make a breakthrough on the pop music scene there? Many CHC members may have questions regarding the connection between the U.S. adventure and the Asian Christian renewal mission of CHC.

2. What is the CHC Leadership Rationale on this issue?

The rationale provided by the CHC Crossover website is that breaking through the U.S. pop music scene would have turned Sun Ho into a global star (the first from Asia), thus increasing her appeal, influence and hence her ability to reach into many people’s lives in Asia and even around the whole world. As a result, Sun Ho would have been able to “shine for Jesus Christ” and achieve all the official Crossover objectives (that I have already mentioned in a previous post, “City Harvest Case Part 1: Following God or Mammon?“). Pastor Kong further claimed that the decision to go to the U.S. was also a direct command given by God to them that had been “confirmed” through months of prayers and by miraculous signs. As examples of these miraculous signs, Pastor Kong Hee claimed during church services that a famous U.S. music producer (later identified as Justin Herz) was so impressed by Sun Ho’s music video “Miss Catastrophe” that he asked her to pursue a career in the U.S., predicting that she would have a great future there. You can check the video below to make you own judgment of its Hollywood potential.

 

Pastor Kong Hee also mentioned that another company (later identified as Tonos) had also offered to Sun Ho a 5 million dollars contract to launch her career in the U.S.. He asked the congregation to pray for her to help her make the right decision about the contract (see link to a prayers list given to CHC members during service in 2005). Here again the command of God was also confirmed by anointed prophets, including strong prophetic words by by Pastor Phil Pringle and blessings by Dr A R Bernard, Senior Pastor of the Christian Cultural Center, New York and CHC advisory chairman.

Finally Pastor Kong Hee repeatedly stressed during services in front of the congregation that going to the U.S. had been a very difficult decision for them to make, as after the birth of their son, Dayan, both he and his wife really wanted to focus more on their family. But in the end, as the command of God was loud and clear, here again they “obeyed” as they had no other choice but to surrender to the Will of God.

3. Critical Perspective on the CHC leadership’s argumentation

There are a few points I would like to cover here. First Pastor Kong Hee and Sun Ho claimed that they had to “sacrifice” their family life in Singapore to obey God’s command. However when we look more closely at the facts, we can observe that Sun Ho was enjoying the “super star” lifestyle, hiring renowned producers and top choreographers, getting large advance bonuses, living in a SGD 28,000 a month luxury mansion in a plush Hollywood district, buying clothes from top fashion designers, being served  by a large entourage of helpers (primarily members from the church) and participating in A-list events with other socialites. In short, she was the main beneficiary of the Crossover project and its fundings. Furthermore Sun Ho brought her family along with her in L.A., giving them the opportunity to enjoy those benefits as well. Finally Pastor Kong Hee himself also moved to the U.S. to be with his family and enjoyed the same luxury socialites lifestyle. He even charged quietly his business class traveling expenses to the Church ($700,000 according to information revealed during the trial). So when a sacrifice comes with so many benefits, we may wonder whether it is still a sacrifice..

Second, it now appears that many of the “miraculous signs” that Pastor Kong Hee had highlighted as proofs of God’s support to the Crossover project, in fact, did not happen or were of dubious nature. For example, what to make of the views of an experienced and renowned industry expert such as Justin Herz who predicted Sun Ho’s success in the U.S.? Let’s consider the following scenario: Imagine that you are an American music producer and you need to make a lot of money to finance your expensive lifestyle, then you come across an Asian pop singer wanabe with big dreams. Unfortunately for her, your professional experience tells you that there is slim chance for her to succeed (for whatever reasons i.e. lack talent, no X factor, etc.).

But then you find out that money is not a problem for her as she is the wife of the Senior pastor of a very wealthy church who even said to you that “the sky is the limit” when it comes to funding his wife’s career (see Todayonline article). Is this going to affect your professional judgment? Considering that at least $6 millions was paid to his company, a cynical view would say that Justin Herz would probably have predicted “the moon” to somebody able to pay him that kind of money. In the many fraud cases I have investigated, I have often noted that you can almost always find a group of people who, while they are not directly involved in the fraudulent scheme, will often knowingly take advantage of the situation to extract money for themselves.

Another example of the “miraculous signs” that did not materialize is Tonos, the company that had supposedly offered to Sun Ho a $5 millions contract to finance the launch of her career in the U.S. had actually stopped operations (see picture on the left) one year before Pastor Kong Hee made the contract offering claim in front of his congregation in 2005 . To put it simply, there was no $5 millions contract. The question is, how could Pastor Kong Hee make knowingly that claim in front of his congregation.

Finally the rationale given to justify the whole U.S. adventure is that 1) the way to influence Asia was through the Sun Ho’s U.S. success and that 2) at the same time, God had extended Pastor Kong Hee’s Christian renewal mission to cover the American continent as well. Pastor Kong Hee just listened and obeyed. There are a simple observations and reasonable questions we should we ask as follows:

We should ask why did they need to take the U.S. detour when it had been claimed in church that Sun Ho was already a very successful (multi-platinum) singer in Singapore, Taiwan and was breaking through in China (she was featured specially on a First-Day Cover Stamp-series in June 2004 and was invited to sing the anthem at the 2007 Special Olympic game in Shanghai among other things)?

  • God of course can extend the mission He has given to Pastor Kong Hee to include the U.S. as well. Pastor Kong Hee continuously claims that God talk to him and that as a faithful servant, he listens and obeys. This is of course very good for a Christian but we can observe an interesting trend ever since the Crossover project started.  It is interesting to observe that God seems to very conveniently agree to whatever Pastor Kong Hee wants to do and will bring him and his wife tremendous benefits. Did God ask Pator Kong Hee to move to the U.S. to spent a lot of money in order to enjoy the lifestyle of the “rich and famous”? Did God ask Pastor Kong Hee to fly Business Class to go home to the U.S.? Did He also asked him to quietly charge $700, 000 of his personal traveling expenses to the church? Or is Pastor Kong Hee extrapolating widely when interpreting the will of God?

Question 3: How does Sun Ho’s public statements and lifestyle in the U.S. align with the objectives of the Crossover project?

1. Why should this be considered an ethical dissonance issue?

While the Crossover project was almost exclusively – in terms of resources allocation – focussing on Sun Ho, her public statements in the U.S. is problematic as she appeared to quite clearly dissociate herself from the Crossover project as well as from City Harvest Church. During media interviews, when probed about her music and connection to CHC, she repeatedly declared that, “I don’t want to think of it as a crossover album” (example: South China Morning post Article “here comes the Sun”) also playing down her connection to City harvest Church as “just the church I’m affiliated to” (read the PR.com Article “Sun Rising“).

2. What is the CHC Leadership Rationale on this issue?

The rationale given by the church leadership is that Sun Ho had to go “undercover” because if  the secular world knew that her breakthrough attempt on the U.S. pop music scene was a Christian Evangelization project, she would have faced tremendous opposition. Pastor Kong Hee often referred to the bible and more precisely the book of Daniel to explain how Christians engaged in the marketplace like Sun Ho should behave. He stressed that Christians are in the world, but not of the world! Like Daniel, you have to engage society to be able to reach positions of influence where you can be a positive force for changes.  Daniel became a high ranking official in the court of the Babylonian king, exerting a strong influence to protect his fellow countrymen.  In order to achieve all these, Daniel had to be “in the world” from the outside looking and behaving like a Babylonian. But he was “not of the world” as he remained true to his faith to God and love for his jewish countrymen. So in summary like Daniel, Sun Ho was just playing a role. The role of a superstar in order to breakthrough on the U.S. pop music scene and achieve a position of influence where she would have been able to “shine for Jesus Christ” and reach into the lives of many people.

3. Critical Perspective on the CHC leadership’s argumentation

The CHC leadership came up with a very effective rationalization as when you buy into the explanation provided, it can justify almost anything. Whatever Sun Ho did that could look like “out of range” can and will be categorized as some kind of necessary “role-playing” for the sake of the Crossover project success. But does the end really justify the means? The question is: Where do you draw the line to make sure that you do not fall too deep and too far to avoid falling into the evil, depravity, and corruption of this world? In other words, how can we be in the world without becoming tainted by the world? Referring again to the Book of Daniel, I would like to point out that although he was indeed on the surface in many ways looking and behaving like a Babylonian, he did have very strict red lines. The most important of them was that he never denied or even played down his faith in God and his loyalty to his community. Even the threat of death did not make him waver. However when it comes to Sun Ho, one may wonder what were the red lines. We will discuss the issue of her U.S. stage personae in Question 4, but I would like to refer to some of the statements she made during media interviews. In those media interviews, when she was asked direct questions about her connection with CHC and her Christian faith, she either eluded the questions or made outright incorrect statements, for example denying that she was a pastor and claiming she was just a counselor in a church she is affiliated to (read the PR.com Article “Sun Rising” for more examples). It seems that Sun Ho was no Daniel after all.

Question  4: How does Sun Ho’s U.S. stage personae fit with the objectives of the Crossover project?

1. Why should this be considered an Ethical Dissonance issue?

The stage personae that Sun Ho adopted to try to breakthrough on the pop music scene in the US is another sticky point that we need to cover with regard to the U.S. road strategy. While the demure nice romantic girl personae that Sun Ho cultivated for the Singapore and Taiwan markets was easily connected to Christian values (even as she was singing secular songs), the much edgier ‘lady GAGA’ type of personae that Sun Ho morphed into for her U.S. adventure was understandably much more difficult to relate to the same Christian values that Sun Ho was supposed to promote. A Geisha dancer in China Wine, who end up with murderous thoughts in Mr Bill and a Gothic ringleader of outcasts in Fancy free may NOT be the kind of role models you would like to offer to your children, even when you are not Christian parents. You can follow the above links to see the videos for yourself. While we may appreciate (or not) the videos from an esthetic or musical point of view, you cannot blame many people – especially Christians – to wonder how this kind of personae and videos will help promote the Gospel values.

 

2. What is the CHC Leadership Rationale on this issue?

You can find on the CHC Crossover website the claim that the “US music market is much edgier and louder than the Asian music market” and therefore a demure nice romantic girl personae would NOT work there. It goes on to further explain that a personae is just an imaginary character, a role used in videos and performances obviously different from the real personality of the artist. And it conclude by declaring that using a personae is “just part and parcel of the music industry”.

3. Critical Perspective on the CHC leadership’s argumentation

So what was the CHC Crossover strategic breakthrough plan then? Was it to make edgier videos until Sun Ho could finally have a breakthrough on the U.S. pop music scene? And then once she had finally become a superstar, she would suddenly shine for Jesus Christ by strongly promoting her Christian faith and encouraging her fans to go to church? If that was the idea, CHC members may wish to question the wisdom of it.

Furthermore CHC members could also question the wisdom of the choices of artistic collaborations made to produce Sun Ho’s singles and albums. For example, the collaboration with renowned rapper Wyclef Jean is potentially questionable for a project of the nature of the Crossover. Why? Simply because besides the probably extravagant cost of hiring him, you could also be puzzled, as a CHC member, about this choice from an artistic and spiritual point of view considering that Wyclef has a track record of music that usually seem to glorify alcohol, sex and careless fun. It may seem a bit difficult to fit that “package” into a Christian evangelization project. Finally, do you really need to be “edgier” to succeed in the U.S. as claimed by the CHC Crossover website? If so, how then would you explain the phenomenal success of Celine Dion, Adele, U2, Coldplay, Justin Bieber and many more artists who did not have to overplay the supposedly edgier side of the U.S. music industry to succeed?

CHC Crossover or Sun Ho’s Crossover?

With all the above in mind, is it inappropriate to ask whether the U.S. stardom quest was really centered on God (except of course to provide the funds to finance it)? Or could it just have been the journey of a woman wanting to realize her own personal stardom dreams?

Sun Ho’s vs the 6 prosecuted CHC Leaders

Considering the findings of the risk analysis that I have developed over my series of posts on the CHC case, many readers might be puzzled as to why Sun Ho, being the main beneficiary of the Crossover project, is not part of the group of the 6 CHC leaders being prosecuted in this case. While she was initially suspended from executive duties in CHC together with other leaders, the CoC has recently dropped their case against her and allowed her to resume leadership roles in CHC. Sun Ho was quick to claim victory and stressed that she had been totally vindicated by the decision made.

This very strange situation where the main beneficiary of suspected fraudulent activities can walk away free, while some other leaders who did not benefit from it (at least not directly) end up being prosecuted for it may seem to challenge common sense. But it can actually be explained quite easily when you consider that there is an important legal principle that applies here as follows:

Everyone charged with a penal offence should be presumed innocent until proven guilty in accordance to the law in a public trial at which he or she has had all the guarantees necessary for a fair defense.

This presumption of innocence means that it is the responsibility of the prosecution to prove the guilt of a criminal defendant and that he (or she) also has the right to a fair defence.

So contrarily to what Sun Ho claims, she has not been vindicated by the CoC decision to allow her to resume her leadership role in CHC and by the fact that she has not been prosecuted in the ongoing case. It simply means that both the CoC and the prosecution obviously felt that they did not have enough material factual evidences to link her directly to the suspected wrongdoings.

What does this actually means?  It could be interpreted in 2 ways:

  1. First, we could postulate that Sun Ho had no ideas of what was happening. That she really thought as she declared during interviews with various media that the crossover, her luxury lifestyle and her charitable activities were financed primarily by her royalties, recording contract, business venture revenues and some friendly businessmen (read the PR.com Article “Sun Rising“). She just sacrificially focussed on playing as convincingly as possible the title role of the “global super star to be” scripted for the Crossover project without asking questions.
  2. Second, we could on the contrary postulate that she was closely associated with many of the questionable decisions made. However, the fact that she had resigned from her Church position in order to Crossover to the secular side and hence was no longer officially directly involved in the management and decision-making in CHC,  may have helped to keep her away from the reach of the prosecution for now. Furthermore she could have only given face to face verbal instructions without leaving any written traces of them. In such a case, it may indeed be difficult to find hard material evidences to link her to the suspected wrongdoings.

Who paid for the Crossover?

The extravagant amounts paid to finance her pop music career, and her carefree,  luxury lifestyle in the U.S. have shocked many church members, the christians community and even the wider public who may have wondered what has it got to do with Christian evangelization works.  The important question here, is who paid for the “party”? This will be the subject of my next post entitled: City Harvest Case Part 6 – The Smog of the Crossover Financing (coming soon). So keep on the lookout for it.

Source: Marc Ronez, City Harvest Case part 5: CHC’s Crossover or Sun Ho’s Crossover, http://marcronez.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/city-harvest-case-part-5-chcs-crossover-or-sun-hos-crossover/, 13/09/2013. (Accessed 19/09/2013.)

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An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 4)

16 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by Nailed Truth in C3 & Pringles Associations

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

c3, c3 church, CHC, Christian City Church, City Harvest Church, fraud, kong, Kong Hee, marc ronez, motive, Phil Pringle, Presence Conference, Pringle

Kong Hee says about CHC, Phil Pringle and the C3 Church Movement,

“You can’t talk about City Harvest Church without talking about C3. Or Christian City Church. You know Pastor Phil has been there for me; praying with me; encouraging me; discipling me; telling me how to do the work of the ministry; taught me how to collect an offering; how to give an altar call; how to build a church; build a team. So Pastor Phil, from the depth of my heart, for Sun and myself, we wouldn’t be where we are today without you and Pastor Chris. Let’s give Pastor Phil and Pastor Chris a big clap.” – Kong Hee, Session 8: (00:24), Presence Conference 2010.

The above quote is something to think about while reading the below article by Marc Ronez. Before reading this fourth article, make sure you have read his earlier articles:

An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 1)
An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 2)
An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 3)

Here is Ronez’s fourth article analysing the CHC situation:

City Harvest Case part 4: Can you Rationalize a Crime to be Beneficial to Society?

Every week Pastor Kong Hee and Pastor Tan Ye Peng both preach eloquently about good ethical principles solidly grounded in the Bible. Through many sermons, they have warned repeatedly the faithful crowd convincingly about the deadly power of sin and how easy it is to be tempted and fall on the wrong side. How could the same men of God, as the COC Report and the prosecution claim, be doing the contrary of what they preach? And if so, how could so many of the smart people that follow them, have ended up closing one eye and sometimes even both eyes to avoid seeing all the wrong things supposedly being done?

First we need to keep in mind that after all, in the eyes of the faithful members of CHC, both Pastor Kong Hee and Pastor Tan have supposedly been anointed by God in their positions. They also have long track records of spiritual enlightenment and good deeds with many testimonies to speak for them. Hence it is understandably really hard to imagine that people with such high apparent moral standing could succumb to self-interest and greed. But… is it still possible?

Could Somebody Considered a “SAINT” Commit a SIN?

Let’s try to answer that question rationally, looking both at the secular and spiritual perspectives. Spoiler alert: the answer to the above mentioned question is unfortunately unequivocally YES from both perspectives.

From the secular perspective, according to psychologists, while people are not usually born with a criminal fraudster mindset, practically everybody could gradually become one as a consequence of a succession of inappropriate decisions and actions. So we should postulate that most people start out in life with reasonably good, solid value systems. However confronted with ethical dilemmas, some of them will make the wrong decisions and from then on will gradually slide to the “dark side”. It may not necessarily happen overnight, sometimes it will take many years of small steps to move further and further away from commonly accepted moral values and principles. Yet interestingly, no matter how far you end up to be from these values and principles, in order to be able to function in society, you will have to maintain the superficial appearance of righteousness. As by definition you cannot be a successful fraudster if it is “written on your forehead” that you are or have become a criminal. A fraudster must appear to be a highly trustworthy character to various key stakeholders in order to be able to pull out his fraudulent schemes. For example, Bernard Madoff was a highly respected figure before he was exposed as a fraudster for building a USD 50 billion ponzi scheme. Prior to that revelation, many investors would queue up to have their money invested in one of his apparently so reliable and profitable investment funds. While there had been negative rumors flying around about Madoff for years, his faithful investors had brushed them off, finding no reasons to question such respected person with a long successful track record to prove his achievements. Does this story sound familiar? We may wonder how many persons and leaders in this world who appear to be good and upright on the surface, really are that way in their hearts…

What about from a Christian spiritual perspective? Here the answer is also very clear as all of mankind has been corrupted by Sin through Adam’s disobedience to God’s command. While according to the Christian faith, Jesus Christ has, by his sacrifice, broken the power of sin and freed mankind from it, the power of the temptation of Sin is still very much present in this world. So unless you think that Pastor Kong Hee & Pastor Tan are sinless – and by doing so you would be committing a blasphemy- you have to admit that the possibility of unethical and even fraudulent behavior on theirs parts is by definition possible. You should also keep in mind that the Bible provide many examples of “fallen” leaders such as the most famous Kings of Israel i.e. Saul, David and Solomon. While they were anointed by God, they all eventually, to various degrees, succumbed to the temptation of sin and greed.

In the CHC case, using the Fraud Triangle Risk Assessment model to guide this analysis, I have highlighted in my previous posts, “City Harvest Case part 2: If There is a Fraud What would be the Motives?“ and ”City Harvest Case Part 3 – The Opportunity Makes the Thief“, that the environment in CHC was very favorable for unethical/fraudulent behaviors.  Indeed a careful  examination of the factors leading to unethical and even fraudulent behaviors showed that the defendants had the incentive or felt the pressure to break the rules (Fraud Triangle Factor 1), and they also had the opportunity to do it and the ability to conceal their actions (Fraud Triangle Factor 2). Now, last but not the least, we will examine in this post the Fraud Triangle 3rd Factor i.e. RATIONALIZATION. This factor implies that the accused CHC leaders would need to find a way to somewhat justify (or RATIONALIZE) their behaviors to be able to break the rules. Why? Simply because almost nobody likes the very negative feeling of thinking about himself as being an unethical person or even worse a fraudster as this would create a painful cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance & Rationalization

Indeed the last issue to address in this analysis is the fact that people engaging in unethical and even fraudulent behavior (unless they have a criminal mind from the beginning) will usually be subjected to what can be termed as a strong cognitive dissonance. A dissonance is a state of internal disharmony that happens when a person faces a situation of conflict between moral values and/or when he acts in a way that is inconsistent with his beliefs or moral values. This dissonance can be a very disturbing, unpleasant and even painful psychological experience, usually leading to strong negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, frustration and anger. The stronger the potential dissonance, the less likely the person will engage in the unethical or fraudulent behaviors. So even when the pressures and incentives are strong (Fraud Triangle factor 1) and easy opportunities are available (Fraud Triangle factor 2), the person tempted to engage in unethical and even fraudulent behaviors will usually experience a painful psychological dissonance. Hence he will feel the intense need to remove the pain and restore internal harmony by somehow “reducing” the dissonance (Fraud Triangle factor 3).

How Can You Reduce The Dissonance?

The best is obviously that you make the decision not to engage in the behavior that create the dissonance in the first place. However if you are in a situation where you still feel compelled or even actually want to do it (because of the benefits you will get), you will need to RATIONALIZE your unethical or fraudulent behavior in a way that is congruent with commonly accepted values and principles. So that you will be able to alleviate the feeling that you are doing something really wrong or that the wrongdoing is somehow justified for example as a mean to achieve a much “greater good” like saving souls with the Crossover project.

Let’s take some examples from the CHC case to illustrate what Rationalization means. After a careful review of the case, a few “difficult issues” that could have created strong dissonances for the accused church leaders and members have been identified. I will list the “difficult issues” in the form of questions as follows:

Question 1: Why choose Sun Ho as the main focus and vehicle for the Crossover project?
Question 2: How does Sun Ho’s U.S. musical career fit with the objectives of the Crossover project?
Question 3: How does Sun Ho’s U.S. stage personae fit with the objectives of the Crossover project?
Question 4: How was the financing of the Crossover project arranged?
Question 5: What are the real fruits of the Crossover project?

Because each of the above questions are about important moral and spiritual issues that can create strong dissonances, there was a crucial need for the CHC leadership to rationalize the answers to those questions to justify their behaviors to make them at least acceptable by the church members and preferably even to win their support.

However, interestingly, it appears that for many years the church communication about Sun Ho’s Crossover had actually been quite limited, essentially consisting of victory announcements when one of Sun Ho’s singles reached the top of the U.S. dance charts or was invited to sing or attend some A-list events. There were also regular glowing reports about her achievements on the humanitarian fronts. Suddenly everything changed when the case broke out in 2010. After a few initial months of confusion and disarray, the church leadership started to communicate intensively about the Crossover project, particularly on the origins, method and fruits, through preaches, videos, information booklets and lastly through the recently launched CHC Crossover website early this year.

From a Crisis management perspective, this flurry of communications and the Crossover website in particular, appear to be a carefully planned and quite well-executed crisis communication strategy to provide the church members with the leadership’s answers to most of the above mentioned “difficult” questions 1 – 5. I can analyse the underlying key objectives of this crisis communication strategy as follows:

    1. To write (or rather rewrite) the narrative (story) of the case from the CHC leadership’s perspective to counter-balance the storyline that has been emerging from the COC & CAD investigations over the past 2 years.
    2. To focus first on CHC members, the objective is to take control of and frame the way CHC members will interpret the facts gradually unfolding to push them towards the narrative developed by the CHC leadership. The ultimate goal is preserve member’s loyalty and even build retroactive support for the new narrative.
    3. Finally to turn the tide in the “battle of mind” with the prosecution by changing the perception of other key stakeholders. How? By building a strong and offensive defense based on a now well-constructed narrative explaining the behavior of the CHC leaders in a positive light.

This communication strategy has already met some successes. A large majority of CHC members have so far, closed ranks rallying faithfully around their leaders with many church members even claiming that they implicitly approved of their leaders’ spending because they have supported the crossover project all along.

This makes this risk assessment analysis all the more interesting and I will now explore more in-depth each of the above mentioned difficult questions in my next few posts. My objective will be to find out 1) why these issues can create dissonances, 2) what are the ways they were “rationalised” by the CHC leadership and 3) to critically analyze them to highlight potential weaknesses (if any) in the argumentation used.

Source: Marc Ronez, City Harvest Case part 4: Can you Rationalize a Crime to be Beneficial to Society?, The Risk Management Paradoc, http://marcronez.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/city-harvest-case-part-4-can-you-rationalize-a-crime-to-be-beneficial-to-society/, 10/08/2014. Accessed 15/09/2013.)

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