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Xtron’s purpose ‘to fund Ho’s career not told to stakeholders’

SINGAPORE — If City Harvest Church (CHC) leaders had set up Xtron Productions as a multi-purpose organisation, why were different stakeholders informed only of certain purposes, chief prosecutor Mavis Chionh questioned yesterday, as she went into the third day of cross-examining CHC’s deputy senior pastor Tan Ye Peng.

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SINGAPORE — If City Harvest Church (CHC) leaders had set up Xtron Productions as a multi-purpose organisation, why were different stakeholders informed only of certain purposes, chief prosecutor Mavis Chionh questioned yesterday, as she went into the third day of cross-examining CHC’s deputy senior pastor Tan Ye Peng.

Pointing to responses prepared to pre-empt possible questions by external auditors engaged by the Government to review CHC’s corporate governance, Ms Chionh argued that Tan and fellow church leaders had planned to present Xtron’s vision as a leader in events management and media production. However, the church’s executive members were told a different story: That Xtron was meant to “manage commercial property on behalf of the church”.

And yet, Xtron’s third purpose — as testified by co-accused and CHC’s former fund manager Chew Eng Han — was to fund co-founder and singer Sun Ho’s music career and forays into the United States market to evangelise under what is dubbed the Crossover Project. However, this was not conveyed to executive members at a “special meeting (in 2010), where they were supposed to be told the truth about Xtron”, Ms Chionh asserted.

Responding, Tan, who was on the stand for the sixth day, admitted that members had not been fully apprised, but contended that auditors had been “given all the relevant information”. “It’s just that we didn’t put it the way Ms Chionh is saying that we should have put it,” he said.

Yesterday, the 42-year-old was also grilled on the “convoluted manner”, as DPP Chionh put it, in which the church board’s meeting minutes had been recorded, where only eventual decisions but not actual meeting proceedings had been noted. Tan explained that some discussions had not been recorded in minutes as they had been conducted informally. “The church was moving very fast. Decisions were made on the run as we progressed … that was why decisions were made subsequent to board meetings.”

Tan and five other church leaders, including Kong, are accused of misusing about S$50 million from the church’s coffers to boost Ms Ho’s pop-music career and then covering up the use. It is the prosecution’s case that about S$24 million in church-building funds was entered into sham bonds in Xtron and Indonesian glass maker Firna, while another S$26.6 million was “round-tripped” via a series of complex transactions to create the impression that the bogus bonds were redeemed and throw auditors off the scent.

Tan is the fifth of six defendants to take the stand. The trial continues today.

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