A CRAFTSMAN from China said in court yesterday that his company was told to draft a letter stating that it had sold two Buddha statues to the Mandala Buddhist Cultural Centre, an artefacts shop here.
But the reality was that the statues had been paid for by the Foo Hai Ch'an Monastery, where former Ren Ci Hospital chief Ming Yi is abbot.
Mandala is a business set up in 1996 by Ming Yi and other partners, the profits of which were to be channelled to Ren Ci.
Mr Zhang Jinhai, a carver with the Beijing firm Bei Jing Jing Hai Shan Artifact, said he wrote the letter last January on the instruction of Raymond Yeung Chi Hang, then Ming Yi's aide.
Yeung is now being jointly tried with Ming Yi for covering up an unauthorised loan of $50,000.
Mr Zhang, whose brother owns the China company, is a witness for the prosecution. He said he has known Ming Yi for about 10 years, and came to know Yeung through him.
The letter to Mandala stated that Bei Jing Jing Hai Shan Artifact had shipped the statues, worth $16,000, here in August 2007, and that 25 cubic m of wood remained unused. This was worth $34,000.
Yeung had ordered the statues in early 2006, he said, and Foo Hai Ch'an Monastery paid for them in October 2007.
Mandala did not pay $50,000 for the statues and the wood, Mr Zhang said.
When asked by Deputy Public Prosecutor David Chew why the letter had stated otherwise, Mr Zhang said it was because a $50,000 receipt had already been made out upon Yeung's request.
