Singapore jails 'showbiz church' leaders

Singapore jails 'showbiz church' leaders

City Harvest Church founder Kong Hee and his wife Sun Ho arrive at the State Courts in Singapore on Oct 21, when Kong was convicted of misappropriating funds and falsifying the church's accounts. (Reuters Photo)
City Harvest Church founder Kong Hee and his wife Sun Ho arrive at the State Courts in Singapore on Oct 21, when Kong was convicted of misappropriating funds and falsifying the church's accounts. (Reuters Photo)

SINGAPORE — Six leaders of a glitzy Christian group in Singapore were jailed on Friday for misusing more than US$35 million to boost membership by turning the pastor's wife into a global pop star.

State prosecutors said the failed project, which involved church-funded raunchy music videos featuring celebrities including rapper Wyclef Jean, led to the biggest charity financial scandal in Singapore history.

City Harvest Church (CHC) head pastor Kong Hee, 51, was sentenced to eight years in jail. The remaining five were handed prison terms ranging from 21 months to six years.

The six were found guilty of fraud in October for diverting S$24 million from a CHC building fund to help Kong's Mandarin pop singer wife, Sun Ho, break into the English-language market.

They were also found guilty of misappropriating another S$26 million from the church to cover their tracks with a complex web of sham financial transactions.

Ho, 43, was never charged and is now a pastor of the church, which is calling itself a reformed "CHC 2.0" with stricter legal and auditing safeguards.

All six convicts were told to report for the start of their prison sentences on Jan 11 after their bail was extended.

"They have been found guilty of serious offences following misuse of trust, misuse of donors' money, given the large sums taken for a specific purpose," state court judge See Kee Oon told a room packed mostly with CHC followers.

State prosecutors said before sentencing that the main charges of criminal breach of trust "involve the largest amount of charity funds ever misappropriated in Singapore's legal history".

But the judge refused to impose stiffer sentences sought by prosecutors, who wanted Kong and three others jailed for 11-12 years. They could have been jailed for up to 20 years under the law.

Kong and his lawyer declined to speak to reporters after the hearing, but the pastor looked calm when he heard the judge mete out his sentence.

Despite being a largely Buddhist and Taoist society, Singapore is home to well-funded Christian groups like CHC which are known as "megachurches".

Pop music is an integral part of CHC services and the pop-music venture, dubbed the "Crossover" project, was aimed at attracting "the unchurched" across the world, particularly the youth, through Ho's music, according to its website.

The pastor and his wife were once a high-profile couple who led the expansion of their congregation, which had more than 30,000 members at its peak several years ago. CHC's 2014 annual report said the congregation's size was 17,522 last year.

But they fell from grace after slickly produced music videos featuring a scantily-clad Ho came out on YouTube. An internal whistleblower also helped expose financial irregularities in the church.

Ho appeared in a 2007 music video called China Wine with rapper Wyclef Jean. In another video, for a reggae-tinged song entitled Mr Bill, Ho appeared as an Asian wife who sings about killing her African-American husband, played by supermodel Tyson Beckford.

Ho moved to Los Angeles in 2009 and tried to break into Hollywood music circles before the scandal scuttled her showbiz ambitions.

The six church leaders were found to have used a practice called "round-tripping", channelling money allotted for a building fund into sham bonds in linked companies, to finance Ho's music career, prosecutors said.

They also falsified church accounts to make it appear as though the bonds were redeemed.

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