When the prosecution put to Serina Wee a “hypothetical” question that if the bonds were sham, the accused would have to meet its obligation under that sham disguise, she replied that it was precisely because there were real obligations to be met that the bonds were not sham.
Co-defendants and church did not control Xtron, Serina Wee told the court today. CN PHOTO: Daniel Poh
Serina Wee said she was not in a position to tell the court what she would do if she was involved in sham bonds because the Xtron bonds were not sham.
The former church finance manager and Xtron accountant said this in answer to the prosecutor’s hypothesis that, if the bonds were sham, Wee and the co-defendants would have to find a way to meet its obligation under that disguise because the time of it being exposed was near.
Wee repeated that Xtron had genuine obligations with regard to the bond, making the bonds real.
The prosecution spent a large part of the morning attempting to show that Wee and her co-defendants had discussed ways to provide Xtron with funds from City Harvest Church to redeem the bonds.
Among other things, the court saw an email in which Wee said that Xtron needed to legitimately earn $2m surplus each year in order to fulfill the bond obligation. In another email, CHC’s senior pastor Kong Hee said that $2m was being set aside for Xtron. Wee explained that the $2m covered Xtron’s services for church events including Asia Conference—the proposal had been discussed with the church leadership and would be legitimate transactions.
Wee maintained that the obligation under the Xtron bonds were real and the Xtron directors were the ones bearing that responsibility; she explained, yet again, that her co-defendants were involved in planning ways to repay the bonds because they were involved in the Crossover Project. She added that the intention was to repay the bonds with album sales proceeds, and that the plans listed out by the prosecution were only scenario planning which ultimately needed to be approved by the Xtron directors.
The afternoon saw the prosecution putting to Wee that she, John Lam and Chew Eng Han kept information from investment committee member Charlie Lay to avoid scrutiny into the “sham” Xtron bonds.
Wee disagreed with this theory.
In an audit-related line of questioning, the deputy public prosecutor asked why Wee had approached auditor Foong Daw Ching, and not engagement partner Tiang Yii, about CHC investing into an insolvent company. Wee replied that Foong had always been the one the church sought for advice first.
Pointing to email evidence, the prosecution also put to her that she was testing out the implications of the solution which she and the other co-accused were thinking of—reissuing the bonds—in order to resolve the problem of Xtron not being able to redeem the bonds upon maturity.
Adding that Wee painted it as a “hypothetical” situation, the prosecution suggested that Wee was trying to avoid raising the red flag to the auditors about having knowledge that the Xtron bonds would not be redeemed in time.
Wee pointed out that the email was written an entire year before the bonds were due to mature—it was a hypothetical question.
The prosecution also put to her that when giving information about the relationship between CHC and Xtron to the auditors, she intentionally gave inaccurate information to them.
Wee disagreed again.
Cross-examination continues tomorrow at 9.30am.
中文报道 – 城市丰收审讯：黄：债券并非虚假；思创具偿还债券的真实责任
