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Tag Archives: Sun Ho

BREAKING NEWS: Kong Hee sentenced eight years jail

20 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by Nailed Truth in C3 & Pringles Associations, Pringle's Prophecies, Uncategorized

≈ 34 Comments

Tags

CHC, Chew Eng Han, City Harvest Church, John Lam, Kong Hee, Phil Pringle, prophecy, See Kee Oon, Serina Wee, Sharon Tan, Sun Ho, Tan Ye Peng

Channel News Asia has been continually reporting the unfolding of events in the Singapore courts of the sentencing of six City Harvest Church leaders.

Press report on Kong & cohorts back in court for oral submission

The judge has sentenced Kong Hee eight years jail in prison.

Kong Hee jailed Phil Pringle

This is the latest update:

City Harvest trial live updates: Leaders sentenced to jail

SINGAPORE: The six City Harvest leaders who were found guilty of criminal breach of trust and falsifying church accounts were on Friday (Nov 20) received jail terms of between 21 months and eight years.

3.00pm: The six leaders have been sentenced to between 21 months’ and eight years’ jail, with senior pastor Kong Hee receiving the heaviest sentence of eight years behind bars. Judge See Kee Oon said Kong Hee, the church’s founder, was found to be the most culpable among the convicted church leaders.

The bail for all six of them was extended, and the start of their jail terms have been deferred to Jan 11, 2016.

1.57pm: “For us ex-members we’ll leave it to the judge. We have to respect the Honour’s decision. As what the prosecutor says, we need to do it right now because it will have a great repercussion on other mega churches on what and what cannot be done,” said a man who identified himself as a former City Harvest member.

1.32pm: Judge says he will pass the sentence at 3pm.

1.28pm: Prosecution: “In pursuing the Crossover Project, the accused have clearly crossed so far over the line that a substantial sentence is certainly called for.”

1.04pm: Prosecution: “This Court has found that loans were sought from a number of individuals in order for Xtron to return the ARLA (Advance Rental Licence Agreement) to CHC… Tan Ye Peng sold his house to pay back. Well, the alternative was to come to court and admit what he has done.”

12.55pm: Prosecution: “We submit that nothing in their circumstances will render the “clang of the prison gates” so thunderous as to justify a short term of imprisonment.”

12.48pm: Prosecution: “Where an offence involves a breach of trust, this is generally treated as an aggravating factor. Its powerful influence is shown by the degree to which it
outweighs factors which would normally go in mitigation. Indeed, there is the paradox that some of the strongest factors in mitigation (unblemished career, model citizen, good employment record) are often present in these cases and yet do not tell greatly in the offender’s favour.”

“The reason is that positions of trust are not normally given to individuals unless they have unblemished references, and so the offence may be seen as a betrayal of those very basis of trust, and one of the burdens of a position of trust is an undertaking of incorruptibility.”

12.39pm: Prosecution: “As this Court has observed, each of the accused persons played their respective roles in a conspiracy with intent to cause wrongful loss to CHC and to defraud the auditors.”

“They did not merely wait passively for Kong Hee to instruct them to carry out each specific act and deception needed to drive the conspiracy forward. They took their own initiative to deceive and mislead the trusting members of CHC where necessary, and cannot escape responsibility for those acts.”

12.34pm: Prosecution: “Kong Hee intentionally fostered an organisational culture of
unquestioning trust in relation to the Crossover Project. He did so by capitalising on CHC’s collective fear of external attack in the wake of the Roland Poon incident, convincing members that they ought to simply trust CHC’s leaders to manage the Project without questioning their motives or reasons.”

12.27pm: Prosecution: “The criminal breach of trust offences which the accused persons committed involve the largest amount of charity funds ever misappropriated in Singapore’s legal history.”

“This long-running case involving criminal breach of trust by the most senior managers of a charity has clearly attracted public disquiet, and inevitably affects public confidence that funds donated for charitable purposes, especially to large and well-resourced charities, are managed honestly and properly safeguarded.”

12.11pm: Lawyer Andre Maniam said: “Serina Wee was not a parish priest commanding respect. Until she was charged, most of Singapore did not know who she was.”

“The accused believed it (the usage of the funds) was for an evangelistic purpose that was positively mandated by the vision and mission of CHC.”

11.55am: Serina Wee’s lawyer Andre Maniam said: “This is an unprecedented case. Neither the prosecution nor the defence has been able to turn up a precedent when Criminal Breach of Trust was committed by using a charity’s funds for its own purposes. We are in uncharted waters.”

11.17am: Lawyer N Sreenivasan: “Insofar as personal relationships are concerned, Tan Ye Peng’s former close relationship with Chew Eng Han has been affected. He feels sorry for what happened to Sharon and Serina.”

“He is not, he is not a participant in the heist of the century or other emotional words the prosecution has used.”

[…]

Source: By Vanessa Paige Chelvan, Justin Ong, Wendy Wong, Kimberly Spykerman, City Harvest trial live updates: Leaders sentenced to jail, News 5 and Ngau Kai Yan, Channel News Asia, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/city-harvest-trial-live/2277418.html, Published 20/11/2015 07:48, UPDATED: 20/11/2015 15:50. (Accessed 20/11/2015.)

 

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Another CHC insider exposes cult abuse in City Harvest Church

28 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by Nailed Truth in Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

A. R. Bernard, Bernard, CHC, CHC cult, chc insider, City Harvest Church, Ex-Charismatics, insider, Jayden, Kong Hee, Sun Ho

00CWCPortrait_INSIDER

From Ex-Charismatics,

I am a current City Harvest Church (CHC) member and still in my teens. I do feel anxious and am unsure why I feel this way. To be honest, I do not want to attend CHC and am aware that Kong Hee and the leadership are guilty for their fraud (and rightfully agree so), but I am coerced to attend CHC by my mother who remains a faithful follower even though me and my own father disagrees with CHC and accuse her of blind faith.

I attended CHC since 2002 when I was a kid. To me, staying in CHC or leaving would not make a difference in my thoughts towards them. Compared to Admin 1’s testimony (goo.gl/NDdXri), CHC now is not as “hard sell and forceful” as they used be during Admin 1’s days. However, there is that implicit pressure going on and I do feel stressful hanging out with my cell group (CG).

In the past, my dad had to disconnect the phone line because they kept calling me. As a 12 year old back then, it was really stressful. They would surround me in large groups, but today, my CG leaves me alone most of the time. My mother still coerces me to go, thinking that it can help me in my anxiety and fears. She thinks I’m a hermit. She also coerce my father to attend CHC and will nag and give him sleepless nights if he refuse to attend for too long.

I find their prosperity sermons boring, that it makes me want to sleep, because they always keep talking about the same things. Pastor Tan Ye Peng speaks the best in my opinion, while Kong Hee is just a savvy speaker. The preaching has been less doctrinal for the past 5 years, as most of the time was spent on praising Kong Hee and his wife, Sun Ho. I don’t care about their prosperity gospel much as I knew it was a lie from day one. I am content with what I have.

My connect group leader (different from cell group leader) keeps asking me to donate to this year’s building fund, claiming that I should donate out of “love for God”. On the stage, the message is about donating to receive financial blessings in return. Honestly, the “successful” testimonies they bring on stage are just 1 out of a 1000 people who donated, while the rest who donated suffered badly. It’s basically a sales pitch, a big propaganda machine. I don’t like it and that’s why I don’t tithe. And why should I since I don’t make any income?? They expect me to use my savings or money given to me by my parents. As my dad does not want to argue with my mom, he lets her be and lets her donate. He knew way long ago that the funds were channelled towards Sun Ho before they were exposed.

I lectured my connect group leader a few days ago, when he asked me about my view on the verdict. He isn’t in the position to comment back to me though since I was in CHC way longer than him. I just told him as a matter of fact, the this was indeed a breach of trust. I was very happy when Kong Hee and the leaders involved got arrested. They cheated me of my money when I was a kid.

Both of my mum’s first two cell group leaders left CHC and they were executive and board members. I am also aware the the cell group and connect group leaders themselves are controlled and pressured from the top.

When I tell my CG leader that I am stressed out, they can’t do anything much and my mum tells them that I have anxiety issues, not realising that CHC and she coercing me to go are the cause of it. I even have a psychiatrist letter proving I have that condition.

My mother however has it worse. Since attending CHC, she became very paranoid and very anxious. Anything that does not go her way smoothly, she will make the ridiculous claim that the Devil is acting against her, like having a minor car accident etc. Sometimes when she presses the wrong number on her mobile, she would blame the Devil for it. She keeps worrying about things and scolds me for being anxious when she in fact, is anxious herself! It’s hard to convince her to leave CHC but to be fair, her current CG people are moderate and many of them dislike Sun Ho’s antics.

When the judge said that Kong Hee was capitalising on people’s fear and paranoia to galvanize support for channeling funds in a discreet manner towards the crossover project, he was not wrong. Indeed, look at what Kong Hee has done to me and my mom now. When Kong Hee made the daring claim some time ago that God said sorry to him, he’s hallucinating! Sometimes I wonder if his dreams and visions are hallucinations or vain imaginations.

After the verdict, I saw the service live online where Kong Hee apologised and bowed his head to the congregation. However, his apology sounded more like he was sorry for the inconvenience caused rather than the fraud and the false doctrines he preached. A.R Bernard who is right now in Singapore, continues to praise Kong Hee and Sun Ho. The previous time he came, he even told the church to obey and trust Kong Hee fully.

I do want to leave CHC but I will do so when I get older as I do not want to cause myself anymore emotional turmoil as I am experiencing right now.

Regards,
Jayden (name has been changed to protect identity)

—————————–

We thank Jayden for sharing his testimony with us. Please pray for him and his family, and that the Lord will give him the courage to leave and guide him to the truth in His Word alone.

Source: From Ex-Charismatics, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/c3churchwatch/permalink/1030406617015638/, Published 13:08 26/10/2015. (Accessed 27/10/2015.)

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Pringle insists on Kong Hee’s innocence: “When people are unjustly accused or unfairly treated, it’s not a time to depart.”

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Nailed Truth in C3 & Pringles Associations

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

CityNews, interview, Kong Hee, Phil Pringle, Sun Ho, trial

CItyNews did a fantastic job after the trial, in their interview with Phil Pringle. They gave him enough rope to continue to be misleading but also exposed him as a liar.

ON TOP OF THE FACTS OR NOT?

The video at the end of the CityNews article has Phil Pringle stating:

“It seemed to me that the judge – uh, ruled that- uh, seemed to say the summation- although I couldn’t say I fully understand all of the facts to do with this case [fake smile] against Kong Hee and the other five…”

Thank you CityNews for exposing Phil Pringle as a liar. In past CityNews publications, Phil Pringle asserted that he was “abreast” of what was happening in court and still insisting on Kong Hee’s innocence a few hours before the verdict.

AT THE TIME, IT OBVIOUSLY SEEMED RIGHT?

Think this statement through. How would Phil Pringle know?

“It’s easy on hindsight to pass criticism, but at the time, it obviously seemed right to them, as they had sought professional advice on their plans.”

This begs the question. Was Phil Pringle somehow involved in all this? Thanks to our C3 insiders, we would like Phil Pringle to explain his dialogue with Kong Hee that he reiterated with his church here:

PP: Don’t do anything illegal.
KH: That’s alright. We can do that in Singapore.
PP: You couldn’t do [any of?] that in Sydney. You couldn’t take money out of the building fund. [Source]

“At the time”, it obviously appeared “right” to Phil Pringle since he prophesied over Kong Hee and Sun Ho to buy the SunTec convention center and to take the Crossover Project further into Asia. Wouldn’t it have been handy for “Prophet for Profit” Pringle to prophetically warn Kong Hee and the other five to get themselves into order? Did he offer prophetic advice to CHCs financial governance?

Furthermore, it was Kong Hee who copied Phil Pringle’s financial giving models, practices and philosophies! So was it “right” for Phil Pringle to allow Kong Hee to do this? Remember, Kong Hee blamed Phil Pringle for all the mess he was in:

“You created this mess! You’ve got to come and help us fix it!” [Source]

Another time Kong Hee retold his circumstances of Phil Pringle leading him and said to Pringle “So it’s all your fault, Pastor!”

As long as City Harvest Church keeps Phil Pringle as advisory pastor, you can probably expect another disaster because of his lies and ongoing false prophecies.

PRINGLE REVILING COURT’S VERDICT?

CityNews also asked Pringle how members should react to “revilers”. Pringle’s response?

“The Bible says, don’t revile people who revile us, but bless those who curse us. And leave any negative response in the hands of God. Our calling is to love, to love those who hate us.”

Sounds very hypocritical considering Pringle’s history maligning people in the pulpit and press. We still find this dialogue very entertaining:

“It’s a criminal act to assassinate someone’s character and not be accountable, to be anonymous. So we’re living with a nameless, faceless, spineless group of people who don’t even have the courage or conviction to identity themselves, while we’re up here—you see my face, you know my name, you have all the numbers to use. The idea these Internet haters have that “I’m protecting myself and my family”—what from? If you’re doing the right thing you have nothing to fear. I know we’re [sic] doing the right thing.” [Source]

That quote was taken from a CityNews article in 2014. What’s changed? In the latest interview Phil Pringle is STILL portraying the Singaporean authorities as falsely condemning Kong Hee:

“Jesus was accused of breaking the law and breaching the Sabbath and the law of blasphemy. Paul was accused of treason. Peter was imprisoned for preaching, which was deemed against the law.

We sometimes have sanitized Christian history. But when Jesus was treated like a criminal and executed, his disciples fled. We must learn from these moments that though people make mistakes, it’s not a reason to leave them. When people are unjustly accused or unfairly treated, it’s not a time to depart.“

By using this analogy, Phil Pringle is conveying the idea that either Jesus was rightly condemned for his sins or that Kong Hee was falsely tried and convicted. Now that Jesus Kong Hee and co-accused have been found guilty of all charges, Pringle’s advice to CHC was that “when people are unjustly accused or unfairly treated, it’s not a time to depart.”

How does Phil Pringle convince CHC that Kong Hee is innocent? By appealing fallaciously to piety (“It’s never been popular to be a Christian, especially when you’re standing for somebody or something”), misdirected faith and guidance, experience (“You simply need to trust in the Lord, and trust what you know about Pastor Kong from your years in church”), and mob appeal (“He is endorsed by many ministers around the world and the faithful members of the congregation who’ve been with him since the start”).

It might be time for Phil Pringle to read CHC Confessions.

CHC STANDING STRONG?

Pringle insisted that “The church will stay together.” That is false, the church can stand through anything. But a cult WILL try to stand together. The sad truth is that City Harvest Church IS “built on Kong Hee” and not Jesus Christ.

In answer to a question, Pringle says, “The church is not built on Kong Hee.” In an answer to another, Pringle says, “If you could appeal, you should. [Kong Hee] has a responsibility to CHC to do that—the church needs him.”

So if the church is built on Jesus Christ, then a cult is built on its leader.

The facts are, CHC has suffered terribly through the ongoing trial with many people leaving and its global reputaiton in ruins thanks to Sun Ho’s smutty music productions and Kong Hee’s unbiblical sermon productions. It’s been these false teachers who have persecuted Christ’s church, and Pringle is still standing quite comfortably with them in their defense.

What is absolutely clear now, is how badly Phil Pringle is trying to keep his “sheepskin” on, trying to give the impression that Kong Hee is still qualified to be seen as a minister of God, despite the fact that the bible clearly disqualies him. Ministers have every right to condemn Kong Hee and Phil Prngle for their deceptive behaviour.

It’s Kong Hee, Sun Ho, Phil Pringle and A.R. Bernard who have caused the world to blaspheme the name of Jesus Christ. They have not repented. They have no shame. CHC has clearly departed from the faith “through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared” (2 Timothy 4:2).

It is absolutely unacceptable for Phil Pringle continuing to insist on Kong Hee’s integrity and innocence, and insist that he has the right to remain a minister despite the fact of the bible clearly disqualifying Kong Hee from holding that office. This is why City Harvest Church and the C3 movement are like cults – they are STILL accountable to no one.


CityNews writes,

Phil Pringle, City Harvest Church’s advisory pastor, was in court yesterday morning to support CHC’s senior pastor Kong Hee. We spoke to him after the verdict.

How did you feel when the verdict was delivered?

Obviously, the verdict is very serious. I was initially shocked, and then deeply concerned for the families—I’m praying for comfort for them. I know Kong is more concerned about others, especially about Sun and his family.

I feel that even though the judge commended them for intending to do the right thing, he [found] that the investment strategy of CHC was not acceptable to the law. I think the situation was that he said, “You meant well, but you did wrong.”

It’s easy on hindsight to pass criticism, but at the time, it obviously seemed right to them, as they had sought professional advice on their plans.

I also think that the judge felt that Pastor Kong was the only one making decisions and that everyone was simply doing what he was directing. I think it’s true Pastor Kong presided over the larger vision; however, the activating was certainly in the hands of many people in the team.

The judge noted the facts that Pastor Kong has not wrongfully gained, nor church wrongfully lost money. However, that fact that the funds had been, in his words, misappropriated, attracted the judgment he delivered.

So, in the light of all these events, we remain filled with faith, that the promises of God are not deactivated by negative circumstances. All of us have made mistakes. We can be thankful to God that He continues to work with us through grace despite our shortcomings.

Let’s continue to stand together believing in the sovereign hand of Almighty God.

We’ve prepared for this as best as we could but the shock of the verdict and the flood of attacks from the public—and even friends and family—may be hard for some of our members to take. Remind us again what we should do.

The Bible says, don’t revile people who revile us, but bless those who curse us. And leave any negative response in the hands of God. Our calling is to love, to love those who hate us. We shouldn’t try to engage those who have only negative things to say—if we can’t say anything constructive, we should be silent.

Jesus was accused of breaking the law and breaching the Sabbath and the law of blasphemy. Paul was accused of treason. Peter was imprisoned for preaching, which was deemed against the law.

We sometimes have sanitized Christian history. But when Jesus was treated like a criminal and executed, his disciples fled. We must learn from these moments that though people make mistakes, it’s not a reason to leave them. When people are unjustly accused or unfairly treated, it’s not a time to depart.

How should members deal with public humiliation?

It’s never been popular to be a Christian, especially when you’re standing for somebody or something. Don’t get into that strange thing when you’re persecuted and you think, “They appear so good, yet the verdict from court has declared them wrong.” You simply need to trust in the Lord, and trust what you know about Pastor Kong from your years in church. He is endorsed by many ministers around the world and the faithful members of the congregation who’ve been with him since the start.

Do you, as our advisory pastor, think we are prepared for this?

More than anybody! The church will stay together. You’ll be strong. You’ll only get stronger. The church is not built on Kong Hee. It’s built on Jesus Christ. The church is more together and more resilient than you think it is. It survives any kind of persecution. The worst kind is when Christians fight against each other, when ministers criticize each other. It’s the worst kind because it’s confusing for the younger believers.

At this moment Pastor Kong is still discussing with his lawyers about an appeal. Do you think he should? Would it be prideful if he did?

To not appeal is to say “Okay, I guess I’m a criminal.” It’s not an arrogant pride. It’s a pride that says “I know who I am. I am not a criminal.” If you could appeal, you should. He has a responsibility to CHC to do that—the church needs him.

It’s a tough time for us all. What do you want us to fill our minds with?

This is the God of Jesus Christ, of David, of Moses—all who seemed like they were in impossible circumstances, but God delivered them. God’s glory is manifested in the darkest hour. We can trust God: His love for CHC will shine through.

Phil Pringle will be preaching, together with CHC’s advisory chairman AR Bernard at CHC the weekend 31 Oct and 1 Nov, 2015.

Source: City News Team, Phil Pringle: “CHC Will Only Get Stronger”, CityNews, http://www.citynews.sg/2015/10/phil-pringle-chc-will-only-get-stronger/, Updated on October 22, 2015 at 4:56 pm. (Accessed 22/10/2015.)

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Sun Ho releases CHC statement

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Nailed Truth in C3 & Pringles Associations

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

c3 church, CHC, City Harvest Church, Sun Ho

Pastrix “Can-we-shut-the-mouths-of-all-these-haters?” Sun Ho writes,

Trial Verdict: A Statement From The Church Leaders

Dear Church Family,

The judge has rendered his decision and, naturally, we are disappointed by the outcome. Nonetheless, I know that Pastor Kong and the rest are studying the judgment intently and will take legal advice from their respective lawyers in the days to come.

As was the case throughout these past three years of court trial, and the earlier two years of investigation, we have placed our faith in God and trust that whatever the outcome, He will use it for our good (Romans 8:28). This protracted season has been extremely difficult, not just for the six, but also for all their families and friends, as well as for our congregation.

In spite of these challenges, City Harvest Church has an unshakeable calling from God. Recently, Pastor Kong has exhorted us to focus on our core values, and serve the purpose of God with greater effectiveness and sustainability. Since 2012, we have had a new management and a new Church Board running the operations of the church. Therefore, let’s stay the course with CHC 2.0. God is making us stronger, purer and more mature as a congregation.

Thank you for your unwavering faithfulness in loving God and loving one another. More than ever before, let’s have a unity that is unbreakable. We are not alone as many of our friends and churches around the world are also interceding fervently for us. God knows the way that we take; when He has tested us, we shall come forth as gold (Job 23:10).

Pastor Kong and I are humbled by the tremendous outpouring of love and support shown to us during this time. We thank you for your prayers. Please continue to pray for Pastor Kong, Pastor Tan, John Lam, Sharon, Serina and Eng Han.

In Christ’s love, for His glory,

Sun Ho
Co-Founder/Executive Director
On behalf of CHC Management Board

Source: Sun Ho, Trial Verdict: A Statement From The Church Leaders, http://www.chc.org.sg/, Accessed 22/10/2015.

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Money, mansions & mendacity: Kong’s “integrity” on show

05 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by Nailed Truth in C3 & Pringles Associations

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

c3, CHC, chc confessions, Christian City Church, City Harvest Church, confessions, kong, Kong Hee, MPA, multi-purpose account, music career, Phil Pringle, Pringle, Sun Ho, tithe

We wonder what Phil Pringle would make of this. He must be horrified that Kong Hee, his star pupil, has used his “anointing” for evil rather than good. Surely Phil Pringle didn’t pass on all his skills to Kong Hee with this outcome in mind.

It’s not like this is anything Phil Pringle would do, is it?

CHC Confessions writes,

KH, after 4 years where you went on stage to tell the congregation you look forward to telling your side of the story in court, this is what we found out from you so far:

1) You do not know the details
2) You are not aware of everyday on-goings
3) You relied on the advice of professionals
4) You are not schooled on bonds issues
5) You left it to your staff to handle and manage

It can be argued that the above are somewhat acceptable to a certain extent, given that CEOs and Heads of big organisations sees only the big picture and make strategic decisions. Let’s leave the nitpicking for another day.

However, what was shocking are the following:

A) Your wife DOES NOT KNOW how her Hollywood lifestyle is being funded. You said that although she was cc-ed in some email, she may not have seen it.

Comment: Really? You expect anyone (die-hard CHC fans notwithstanding) to believe that? Its like I’m suddenly put in the midst of high-life, high fashion, high society, and I can live for years without ever wondering how am I affording it? Either she is completely dumb and stupid, or you’re lying. Pick one. (Although I’m sure some readers will pick both.)

B) As an “artist” (apologies for the offence caused to real artists for using the same term), she’s getting paid by the church via royalties and bonuses.

Comment: Personal gain and self-gratification aside, it is common knowledge that the X number of years she spent in Hollywood amounted to absolutely nothing. Show your projected album sales to anyone who knows anything about the music industry, and the bunch of you will be thrown out of the door before you can say, “ABBA!”

Artists get paid via album sales, and they are also paid to attend events. The difference here is, your wife gets paid by the church, and she pays others to attend her event. Some kind of artist she is huh? Asian artists who made an impact in the USA are few and far in between (Coco Lee and Rain are 2 that comes to mind). Even with the immense success they had (relative to your wife), they couldn’t afford the lifestyle your wife enjoyed throughout the years. What makes anyone think she can? Now we know, straight from your mouth.

C) You DID NOT TITHE.

Comment: Its not clear whether you did not tithe at all, or stopped tithing after a certain events. What is clear though, is that when asked whether you tithe to the Building Fund, your answer was, “I tithe to the MPA”, which if we can be frank and call a spade a spade, is your personal account.

So for all the drama you’ve showcased onstage, all the challenges you thrown to the floor, all the bible verses quoted, asking people to downgrade their lives, sell their houses, give everything, make painful sacrifices, and all the evidence and testimonies of 30, 60, 100 fold rewards of tithing, you yourself, did not tithe. Instead, you bought yourself a nice house in Sentosa Cove.

For me, the rest of the trial is no longer relevant.

Source: CHC Confessions, FaceBook, https://www.facebook.com/CHCConfessions/posts/859423324077046, Published at 20:54 04/09/2014. (Accessed (05/09/2014.)

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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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Kong’s controversial email in court exposes Phil Pringle as a false prophet

26 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by Nailed Truth in C3 & Pringles Associations

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Beijing, c3, c3 church, CHC, china, Christian City Church, Christian City Church Oxford Falls, City Harvest Church, courts, Europe, Kong Hee, Phil Pringle, Presence Conference, presence conference 2010, Pringle, prophet, Prophet Phil Pringle, Sun Ho

What was a “big factor” for Kong Hee and Sun Ho to go to China?

“Finally, it was a word given by Phil Pringle to Sun privately in May 2005 that gave them clarity to their path. “He said, ‘Five more years, because God is going to open a big door for CHC in China to be a blessing to the people.’ That word gave us the courage, faith and confirmation to resume the Crossover Project,” said Kong.” – Yong Yung Shin, http://www.citynews.sg/2012/05/city-harvest-church-10-years-of-the-crossover-project/, City Harvest Church: 10 Years Of The Crossover Project, 09/05/2012. (Accessed 27/09/2012.)

Here is Kong Hee in 2010 telling people at C3 Presence Conference how prophetic Phil Pringle is and how successful Sun Ho was in China:

“Pastor Phil and Pastor Chris, they carry a spirit of prophecy. And five years ago when my little baby was born, Dayan, and my wife and I were thinking about taking a six month break. Go to Europe. Just backpack. Take little Dayan. We’ve been planting. I mean we’ve been running the church for so long.

And then Pastor Phil came to Singapore. And four months after little Dayan was born, in one of those meetings, the Holy Spirit HIT. And how many of you know that- talking about being dangerous, when the Holy Spirit comes upon Pastor Phil, he gets dangerous. Right?

And he starts prophesying, “Sun! It’s not time for you to stop. You got to go to China.”

And at that word, you know we let go of our nets. And then- so Sun’s been on the road right now. She’s living in the LA. And true enough, China opened up. She became the music ambassador for the Olympic games. Sang at the special olympics. Sang the anthem at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And just last week, I mean – she’s a few months away from launching her début album in America. Just let you know, her first single, last month was number one in the US, number one in the UK on the secular charts. Lets praise God for that! Hallelujah! So we got Pastor Phil to thank for that.” – Kong hee, C3 Presence Conference, Session 4, Sydney, 2010. [Watch video here]

Is this why Kong Hee blamed Phil Pringle for all this mess?

The Straits Times reports,

Kong decided on ‘what money to spend, how much and where it would come from’

SINGAPORE – City Harvest founder Kong Hee was the key decision-maker behind plans to sink church funds into his wife’s Ho Yeow Sun’s music career in the United States, the prosecution said in court on Wednesday.

They also sought to show that Kong closely supervised the other co-defendants. Deputy Public Prosecutor Christopher Ong produced a 2007 e-mail in which Kong had berated Tan Ye Peng for failing to ensure that his wife’s China concerts were a success.

“The Beijing and Shanghai events cost us so much money… but at the end, who came? It was a joke!” said Kong in the e-mail. “Time wasted. Efforts wasted. Objectives not met. Money thrown away unnecessarily. I don’t get it. How have we become good stewards of money? We tried to save a few thousands on hotels and (threw) hundreds and thousands on result-less concerts.”

Kong added: “How I wish I can run the whole show the way I run our church (in) the last 18 years! But I can’t… (My wife and I) are putting our lives and destiny at the hands of our disciples, our spiritual children. We hope you guys don’t let us down.”

While Kong has maintained that he was involved only in the budgeting for the US foray and left the fundraising to others, the prosecution alleged that Kong made decisions about “what money to spend, how much and where it would come from”. The prosecution produced statements made by Kong’s co-defendants to the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) to bolster the point.

Kong and five others face various charges for their part in the alleged misuse of some $50 million of church funds to boost Ms Ho’s music career, and then to cover up the deed. Several of them allegedly got the funds out of City Harvest coffers by investing the money in sham bonds issued by two companies, Xtron Productions and Firna, which were run by church members. Xtron was Ms Ho’s artist manager at one time.

While Kong maintained that Xtron directors had to give approval for company transactions to finance her career, statements made by Kong’s co-defendants Serina Wee, Chew Eng Han and Tan to the CAD contradicted this, said the prosecution.

According to the three defendants, Xtron directors were “updated” only after Tan, Wee and Kong had made the decisions. “Xtron directors were not actively involved,” said Chew in his statement. “Technically they can challenge (the decisions), but they would not because they are doing the right thing by giving their full support,” he said.

Kong disagreed. He said that Xtron directors being “updated” meant their approval for the transactions were sought, and in the end it was the directors who had final say over whether the deals were made.

Source: By Feng Zengkun, Kong decided on ‘what money to spend, how much and where it would come from’, The Straits Times, http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/courts-crime/story/kong-decided-what-money-spend-how-much-and-where-it-would-come-201#sthash.ZMf2fMfG.dpuf, Published on Aug 20, 2014 2:08 PM. (Accessed 21/08/2014.)

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If you’re a C3 member, read Pringle’s endorsed CityNews coverage of CHC court case

18 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by Nailed Truth in C3 & Pringles Associations

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

C3 members, CHC, City Harvest Church, CityNews, court, endorsement, endorses, Kong Hee, news, newspapers, Phil Pringle, Pringle, Sun Ho, tabloids

“I think it’s great you’ve got City News […] — they still do a pretty good job.”

Phil Pringle will often tell you as C3 members to not read news that is making CHC look bad. According to your pastor, any news critical of C3 or CHC are bad and purposely spreading things that are not true of C3 or CHC.

However when asked about the media in relation to Kong Hee’s court case, Phil Pringle encourages church members that, “it’s worth knowing what the mainstream press is saying”.

“I think it’s worth knowing what the mainstream press is saying—I certainly stay abreast of it (CHC case).” – Phil Pringle, An Interview With Phil Pringle: On Goals, Victory, Truth & The Ultimate Breakfast Partner, CityNews, 07/03/2014. (Accessed 26/03/2014.)

To C3 readers visiting our site, have you been reading what Singapore media are reporting on?

In fact, Pringle thinks Kong Hee’s CityNews group does a “pretty good job” covering the events on Kong Hee’s court case.

So to all our C3 readers, with Pringle’s endorsement of CityNews, we would encourage you to not only read these “pretty good” CityNews articles but pass them on to your C3 friends. You may as well be informed as much as your pastor.

To read the original articles on City News, click the links below and scroll down to the bottom of the articles to access the URLs.

= = = = = = = = = = = =

COURT 04/08/2014

CityNews:

CHC Trial: John Lam Explains Building Fund Refunds To Court

CHC Trial: Prosecution Questions Existence of Personal Guarantee

COURT 05/08/2014

CityNews:

John Lam: “False” Entries Not What Prosecution Makes It Out To Be

COURT 06/08/2014

CHC Trial: Personal Guarantees Are Meant As A Last Resort, Says Defendant Lam.

CHC Trial: Prosecution Questions “Scenario Planning” Efforts By Accused

CHC Trial: DPP Questions Ex-Board Member’s Interest In Protecting The Church

COURT 07/08/2014

CHC Trial: Defense Objects To “Unfounded” Insinuation Of Fresh Exhibit

COURT 08/08/2014

Rubber Stamps, Unsold Albums And Phantom Guarantees Explained

COURT 11/08/2014

Kong Hee Takes The Stand; Reasons For And Sequence Of Crossover Project Established

CityNews reports CHC dropped church funds but used Hanafis funds for Crossover

COURT 12/08/2014

CHC Trial: Kong Hee: The Budget Of The US Album Had To Be Sound And Reasonable

Kong Hee Said No to 50-50 Profit Share With US Execs; Church Must Not Lose “A Single Dollar”

COURT 13/08/2014

Defendants Worked Out Budget To Ensure Xtron Recouped Its Investment

Why Sun Ho Was Managed By Xtron Instead Of Another Company

COURT 14/08/2014

Kong says Sun would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling CADS

CHC Trial: Kong Hee: Spiritual Mentors’ Endorsement Of Crossover Project A “Big Factor”

COURT 15/08/2014

City Harvest Trial: Church Not To Directly Fund Crossover

Chew Eng Han grills Kong…

COURT 16/08/2014

What did Sun Ho get up to in the Beijing Olympics?

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What did you say Pringle? (Part 1) Isn’t this what Kong did at CHC?

15 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Nailed Truth in C3 & Pringles Associations

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

case, CHC, CityNews, court, mansion, Phil Pringle, Sun Ho

This piece is a follow up from our previous article:

Another CityNews interview with CHC Advisory “Pastor” Phil Pringle

Phil Pringle said:

‘That’s one of the greats [sic] difficulties in church life, because you have unscrupulous people who say, “Trust me, I’m a Christian, gimme $100,000, I’ll invest it for you.” So the person gives him $100,000 and he doesn’t [sic] invest the money but does something else with it, and then he comes back and says, “I’m sorry, I’ve lost it.” And those people get very hurt and leave the church. As pastors, we say to people, “Whenever you’re doing business together, make sure you’ve got contracts signed.” Don’t just say “He’s a Christian, I’ll trust him.” Some people have no shame. How can you take so much money and lose it, and say you’ll fight the person you owe?’

Has anyone else spotted what Phil Pringle has done here? Has Phil Pringle described to City News what Kong Hee has done?

1. “Trust me, I’m a Christian, gimme $100,000, I’ll invest it for you.”

Kong established a building fund with the understanding, naturally enough, that money contributed to that fund would be used to purchase a building for CHC. Then he importuned his congregation to give him money “until the tears [ran] down [their] face[s]”.

Kong Hee Is Not About “Building Buildings” But “Building People”? Really?

It’s sad if you think about it.

2. “So the person gives him $100,000 and he doesn’t invest the money but does something else with it […]”

Kong’s followers gave him buckets of money, and it appears he took SG$24,000,000 and spent it on “something else”, namely his wife’s pop-star fantasies.

And those fantasies where indulged to the very utmost, and in the most obscenely profligate manner. For example, Sun Ho lived the high life in Hollywood, staying in a mansion that cost $28,000 per *month* to rent – and this while Kong’s faithful sheep were downsizing their own housing in order to give him more money!

The House Of The Rising Sun

Of course, Kong missed his wife, so he just had to fly over to the U.S. to see her on a regular basis – and he clocked up airfares to the tune of $700,000, all paid for with hard-earned money that was given to him by the trusting and sincere members of CHC.

An Insightful Analysis To The CHC System (Part 5)

(Apparently Kong even took money from children: he wanted the contents of their angpows – red packets containing money that are given as gifts on special occasions in Chinese and other Asian societies. Obviously, when a jet-setting “pastor” has big bills coming in, no gift is too small – could a so-called “man of God” possibly stoop any lower than to do such a thing?)

3. “[…] and then he comes back and says, “I’m sorry, I’ve lost it.”’

Kong hasn’t got around to admitting his guilt yet, much less apologising to his thousands of victims; however he may well crack as the trial continues and the pressure on him builds. Nonetheless, Kong has certainly lost all the money – there is nothing to show for it other than a handful of tacky and tasteless “music” videos by his talentless partner, Sun Ho.

4. “And those people get very hurt and leave the church.”

A lot of people have left CHC, and many are extremely angry that they have been duped by Kong Hee, and understandably so.

5. ‘As pastors, we say to people, “Whenever you’re doing business together, make sure you’ve got contracts signed.” Don’t just say “He’s a Christian, I’ll trust him.”

So, according to Phil Pringle, we should be thinking along the lines of “Don’t just say ‘Kong’s a Christian, I’ll trust him'”. That’s excellent advice, “pastor” Phil – it’s just too bad that you didn’t give the good people of CHC that warning *before* Kong Hee and his accomplices took that money from them.

6. ‘”Some people have no shame. How can you take so much money and lose it, and say you’ll fight the person you owe?’

It’s true: Kong has no shame. Firstly he has the hide to stand in front of his followers and tell them that he “maintains [his] integrity” (as though he has ever shown any). Then he attempts to deflect the blame for his conduct onto his associates and underlings in a cowardly and pathetic attempt to save his own skin.

How indeed could Kong misappropriate such a huge amount and then turn around and swear blind that he is innocent? How could he be so shameless as to throw his fellow staff under the bus when it is plain as day that he and his wife were the principal beneficiaries of this outrageous scam?

Phil’s words raise an interesting question: was his oblique enumeration of events at CHC deliberate, or was it something unconscious?

Maybe the scriptures can help us answer this question.

“But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.” 2 Peter 2:1-3

“For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” Philippians 3:18-21

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Judge not lest Hee be judged…

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by Nailed Truth in C3 & Pringles Associations

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

CHC, CHC trial, court, judge, Kong Hee, straits times, Sun Ho, Wyclef Jean

The Straits Times has set up their own tweet stream reporting on what Ps Kong Hee says in court on the stand. Kong Hee has said some very interesting things worth looking into.

Straits Times reports,

City Harvest trial: Kong Hee takes the stand

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong Hee takes the stand for the third day. Insists that he kept a close eye on the budget for Sun Ho’s first English album.
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4h

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong Hee takes the stand for the third day. Insists that he kept a close eye on the budget for Sun Ho’s first English album.
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20h

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong Hee wanted to recoup church’s investment in wife’s music career http://bit.ly/1q6qOZa pic.twitter.com/veuOvooXZE
View image on Twitter
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12 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says fellow defendants Tan & Chew informed him of plans to buy bonds to fund album; he told them to ensure it was legal
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12 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Efforts made to lower budget for Ms Ho’s US album project, producers like Wyclef Jean dropped if they asked for too much – Kong
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12 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong Hee also insists budget for Sun Ho’s foray into the US music scene was overseen “rigorously”
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12 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Hip hop artist Wyclef Jean wanted an “Asian reggae” sound. It was successful “but not in sync with the image Sun wanted” – Kong
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12 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC: Sun Ho sounded ‘too white’ so Wyclef Jean suggested an Asian-Reggae fusion: Kong http://bit.ly/Vhuw9Q pic.twitter.com/vgCBKCyZRe
View image on Twitter
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12 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong Hee says both he and his wife Sun Ho were “uncomfortable” with her English single China Wine.
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12 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: The singles topped US dance charts and Hertz suggested Sun produce an English album in 2005, says Kong pic.twitter.com/Zwc2THcCfK
View image on Twitter
Expand
12 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: This pastor later introduced Sun Ho to US music producer Justin Herz, who helped her produce two English singles in 2003 & 2004
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12 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: A pastor in Florida asked Sun Ho for her music videos as it might appeal to Americans, says Kong.
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12 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong Hee takes the stand again for the second day to explain how his wife Sun Ho launched her music career in the US
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Founder Kong Hee said he did his part to ensure church funds used properly http://bit.ly/1sGz4C6 pic.twitter.com/X9P4oDdobm
View image on Twitter
Expand
11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Proceedings have ended for today, with Kong Hee expected back on the stand tomorrow
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Mr Foong assured Kong many times that if something was wrong, he would be informed. He even checked Kong’s media responses.
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says Mr Foong never refused him advice, praises the auditor for providing “impeccable” services
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says he is not a trained accountant and can’t evaluate Mr Foong’s advice, but calls him a “respected elder”
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: One church member wanted Xtron to be audited by different, cheaper firm, but Mr Foong urged Kong to use the same auditor
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says “Bro Foong” was his sole confidante in financial matters, church staff asked to consult him when issues surfaced
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Ms Ho not in court as she is on the witness list, not allowed to listen to testimony
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says special audit carried out after Mr Poon’s allegations. Auditors looked at how Mr Hanafi paid for Ms Ho’s albums
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Judge says Kong should clarify what exactly the auditors and lawyers hired by the church were asked to do
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Mr Foong had previously testified that he could not recall details of advice he gave or the meetings he held with those accused
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Mr Yin, along with auditor Foong Daw Ching, looked through meetings of church meetings to make sure there was nothing untoward
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Senior counsel brought in to boost governance at the church was Jimmy Yin. He was asked to look at transactions involving Xtron
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong claims that Mr Poon had told another pastor he had been hearing voices and wanted to make restitution for the allegations
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong has no idea what Mr Poon, who later retracted his allegations and apologised, looks like to this day
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Roland Poon incident was a “wake-up call” for the church, says Kong. A senior counsel was hired to ensure better governance
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Church called Mr Hanafi, who promised to fund Crossover Project, to ask if he’d pay for Ms Ho’s first two albums. He agreed.
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says there was a lot of hate mail coming in, and generally a lot of unrest in the church
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says church had paid for Ms Ho’s first two albums, but the board decided henceforth not to support her album expenses
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong was busy that weekend counselling members, but says there was an informal board meeting to discuss the allegations
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says members traumatised the next day after being questioned by family and friends
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Four allegations – (3) I forced members to vote for her at an awards and (4) we were using building funds to sponsor her album
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: The four allegations – (1) I’m making the church worship my wife before god (2) I’m forcing members to buy her albums
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong replies “I was on my home when one of my staff asked me to watch CNA, there were four allegations.”
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial resumes with Kong asked about the time in 2003 when member Roland Poon alleged that funds were used for Ms Ho’s music career
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
City Harvest trial: I went from ‘shepherd’ to ‘rancher’ as church grew, says Kong Hee #CHC http://bit.ly/1lO0Usa pic.twitter.com/nwggQZrMoI
View image on Twitter
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
“Privileged” exhibits Chew Eng Han was warned against using were correspondence between him and investment firm that dealt with #CHC funds
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Court tells church board’s lawyer “you have been put on notice that you may have to make your submissions in open court”
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: The letter said all communications between Chew and the church were privileged
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC lawyers had sent one accused, Chew Eng Han, a letter warning him about some of the exhibits he was going to use when questioning Kong
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
Before trial breaks for lunch, prosecution suggests #CHC’s lawyer raise objections in open court over which exhibits can’t be presented
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong tells the court that 280,000 people went, and 100,000 filled out cards wanting to know more about Jesus
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says his wife’s concerts for her first album were City Harvest’s “best evangelism tool” then
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: The board believed the Crossover Project should be expanded to the “whole world”, Kong says
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong tells the court that the church’s board supported the decision to expand Ms Ho’s music career to the United States
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: In the video, Mr Hanafi’s daughter said the family had donated to support the project.
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: The video was screened to tell the church and its members where the expenses for Ms Ho’s first two albums came from
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: She said in the video that the Hanafi family “is very proud of what Sun is doing”
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC: Kong’s lawyer Edwin Tong reveals video transcript in which Mr Hanafi’s eldest daughter offers to donate to project on behalf of family
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Mr Hanafi, who was in charge of the 2 firms that managed Sun Ho’s music career, allegedly helped the defendants to misuse funds
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: In tears, the Indonesian told Kong that he would pay for the project, the pastor tells the court
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Indonesian businessman Wahju Hanafi and his family helped out during earlier concerts, says Kong
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Sun Ho had her own full-time manager only from the second album, Kong says.
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says his role in the project was as its “leader and visionary”. He was Sun Ho’s personal manager for the first album.
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Members also supported the Crossover Project financially, Kong says
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: A survey of 1,700 members was carried out – and 90% said she should continue, Kong tells the court
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC: When his son was born, Kong says he asked the church whether his wife should continue with the project, since she had become a mother
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: More than 1,600 members volunteered to help with Ms Ho’s 80-concert tour, adds Kong
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: City Harvest Church members were very excited about the project when they were told about it, Kong says
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: After a short break in court, Kong continues talking about the Crossover Project
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: So they signed with another firm for a two-album deal
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong did not want Ms Ho to sign with Sony as it kept a tight rein on artists. Kong was afraid she would not be allowed to preach
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: That was when Kong though his wife could “engage the world of MTV” and preach to the world. He told the church, who supported it
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says a Sony executive told him that Ms Ho had the potential to be a pop artist
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: In 2001, Kong tells the court, work was started on a pop album. They also made some music videos
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says he was later asked by a music producer, why not get Ms Ho to do a pop album? Since youth no longer listen to gospel
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: The reception was great, says Kong. “I thought this is the way to go”
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: On another trip to Taiwan, they did it again – singing secular songs and tweaking the lyrics
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says he tested this at an international church conference and the young people loved it
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom

#CHC trial: In June 2000, Kong had the idea to get his wife to do pop routines, instead of singing “I love you”, to sing “I love you, Jesus”
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: When he was on the way home, Kong says he heard God tell him to evangelise to the youth in Taiwan
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: But City Harvest Church here was filled with young people, says Kong
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: A Taiwan missionary told Kong the church had lost its appeal there, and that people were interested in sports and entertainment
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says that he was invited to Taiwan for the first time in 1999. There, he says, the Christian population was ageing
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong explains to the court how the Crossover Project was started
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong adds that the church’s “organisational structure” was good, and that he trusted the church’s lawyers and auditors
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Still, Kong had a “general sense that everything was going well”. He left the details to the board, was alerted for big issues
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
#CHC trial: Kong says that as church president, he relied a lot on the church board as he was mostly overseas
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
City Harvest trial: Kong began by going through his past, saying he wanted to be a missionary in 1989 when he felt god speaking to him.
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11 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
City Harvest trial: Church founder Kong Hee has taken the stand in the trial over the alleged misuse of church funds.
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9 Aug

The Straits Times ✔ @STcom
City Harvest trial: Purchase of CDs ‘doesn’t mean they weren’t doing well’ http://bit.ly/1ssyiIS
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Source: City Harvest trial: Kong Hee takes the stand, The Straits Times, http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/courts-crime/story/city-harvest-trial-kong-hee-takes-the-stand-20140811, Published on Aug 11, 2014 10:25 AM. (Accessed 13/08/2014.)

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