Businessman takes stand for defence as CHC trial nears end

SINGAPORE  — After two years and more than 1,500 documents tendered, the trial of six City Harvest Church (CHC) leaders drew to a near-conclusion yesterday, with a businessman taking the stand as the last witness for the defence.

The prosecution and defence will now prepare closing submissions and are expected to wrap up their case before Presiding Judge of the State Courts See Kee Oon over two days in September.

The six accused face three to 10 charges each of criminal breach of trust and falsification of accounts. They allegedly funnelled S$24 million of church building funds via sham bond investments to fund the pop music career of Ms Ho Yeow Sun, wife of CHC co-founder Kong Hee and also a  church co-founder, and allegedly misused another S$26.6 million to try to cover up the first amount. 

The other accused persons are Chew Eng Han, the church’s former investment manager, who left CHC shortly after the trial started in 2013, former church accountant Serina Wee, former finance manager Sharon Tan, Kong’s deputy Tan Ye Peng and former church board member John Lam.

For his last witness today, Chew called businessman Jean-Jacques Lavigne, who was a fellow member of the Business Breakthrough Group, an entity formerly under the church. Mr Lavigne previously worked for conglomerate SUTL, which owns the ONE°15 Marina Club. SUTL was interested in bidding for the F1 Pit Building site in 2006, and was in talks with the church on commercial plans for the building. 

Mr Lavigne told the court he had total faith in Ms Ho’s debut English album — part of the church’s Crossover Project to reach out to non-Christians — which was to be released in the United States. The businessman, who started attending CHC around 1999, said he had bought copies of her earlier Mandarin albums although he did not understand the language.

And although Mr Lavigne learnt about the church’s bond investments in 2010 only after they had taken place, he said the move was “probably the best thing to happen in years”. He stopping attending City Harvest soon after Chew left, but has not terminated his membership, said Mr Lavigne. 

He was the last of 23 witnesses called over the 137 days of the trial. The prosecution’s witnesses included the church’s auditors and Indonesian businessman Wahju Hanafi, who was a director of Ms Ho’s management company Xtron Productions and whose Indonesian glassware company issued bonds to the church. The defence’s witnesses included the six accused persons and Ms Ho, who took the stand yesterday. 

Approached during a short break today, Kong said the past two years had been difficult “for my family, for the church, for all my friends. I’m grateful that the trial is over”.

Fellow accused Chew said: “I don’t feel anything. I’ve been standing on the truth consistently; it wasn’t that traumatic for me.”