Singapore’s City Harvest church leaders jailed up to eight years for misappropriation

Six Christian church leaders in Singapore were jailed on Friday for misusing more than US$35 million of church funds to turn the pastor's wife into a global pop star.

State prosecutors said the failed project, which the church defended as an attempt to attract converts but involved raunchy music videos, was the biggest charity 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 varying from 21 months to six years.

“The criminal breach of trust offences which the accused persons committed involve the largest amount of charity funds ever misappropriated in Singapore's legal history,” state prosecutors said before the sentencing.

The six were found guilty of fraud in October for diverting S$24 million (HK$131 million) from a 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.

Singer 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.