City Harvest trial: $6 million purportedly paid to American production company

It has emerged in court on Monday that $6 million was paid to producer Justin Herz by City Harvest Church through Xtron Productions. The amount, reflected on an excel sheet and listed under "additional JH needs", came attached in an email from accused Serina Wee in Oct 2009.

Mr Herz owns JH Music, which is a production house registered in California; he was engaged to produce and promote Ho Yeow Sun's first English-language single and album there. Xtron was formerly managing Ms Ho.

Second witness Angie Koh, a former accounts assistant at the church, was also asked by prosecutors about an email that she sent to Mr Wahju Hanafi, where she had told him to settle certain transactions so that the money would "reach Justin in two weeks".

"What does Justin have to do with the drawdown of bonds from Firna?" asked Deputy Public Prosecutor Mavis Chionh. Firna is the company owned by Mr Wahju in which City Harvest Church allegedly bought sham bonds from.

Ms Koh replied that she "could not remember".

The prosecution tried to show on Monday that a few of the accused church leaders had plotted the movement of millions of dollars, while leaving others out of the loop on their plan.

An email from Serina Wee to Sharon Tan - both of whom are accused persons - saw the former saying that she did not want her company, Advante, to be reflected in "any of the transactions", so that "auditors wouldn't link us".

Another email from Wee to Mr Wahju, who is not one of the accused, saw Wee telling Mr Wahju to complete certain transactions in the "soonest possible time frame", so that the bank would not "raise any questions".

Mr Wahju is also the director of Xtron and Ultimate Assets, which were involved in transactions with the church.

Mr Wahju had said in an email reply to Wee, Chew Eng Han and second witness Angie Koh: "All these costs are to be borne by Xtron or whatever company. We are just instruments to make things happen."

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