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Spotlight on City Harvest’s bond investments

SINGAPORE — The trial of six City Harvest Church leaders resumed today with the prosecution questioning former church assistant accountant Lai Baoting about two tranches of bonds from its investment manager AMAC Capital Partners’ Special Opportunities Fund.

SINGAPORE — The trial of six City Harvest Church leaders resumed today with the prosecution questioning former church assistant accountant Lai Baoting about two tranches of bonds from its investment manager AMAC Capital Partners’ Special Opportunities Fund.

AMAC is a company founded by one of the accused, Chew Eng Han.

Chew and five others including church founder Kong Hee are facing charges of criminal breach of trust and falsifying accounts.

City Harvest Church had transferred S$11.4 million to AMAC and the bonds were to have a 2-percent interest rate. However, Ms Lai said she was told by Sharon Tan — the church’s finance manager and one of the accused — that the total interest to be accrued should be S$76,625. Ms Lai then work backwards, calculating an interest rate of 5.05 per cent for the two tranches of bonds. She then asked Chew to “redo” the bonds’ subscription invitation.

During cross examination of Ms Lai, defence lawyers sought to establish that CHC’s external auditor was not concerned about the authenticity of its bond investments in Xtron Productions and an Indonesian company PT The First National Glassware, and neither was he concerned about the church’s transactions using money from its Building Fund. Ms Lai agreed.

Ms Lai also agreed with Sharon Tan’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Kannan Ramesh, when he asked if it was fair to say Xtron, which provided audio-visual services to CHC and from whom the church rented its Singapore Expo premises, kept separate accounting books from the church.

The trial continues.

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