Sun Ho's US album release scrapped due to CAD investigations into City Harvest: Kong Hee
The planned release of pop singer Ho Yeow Sun's first full English music album in the US in 2010 was cancelled because of Singapore authorities' investigations into City Harvest Church, the megachurch's co-founder Kong Hee said in court on Thursday.
Kong, alongside four other City Harvest Church leaders and former member Chew Eng Han, is accused of misappropriating more than $50 million worth of church funds to finance his wife Sun Ho's singing career.
On his fourth day on the witness stand, Kong said that Ho having to remain in Singapore after being summoned in June 2010 by the Commercial Affairs Department drove her to miss her 17 August album drop date.
"All the work we had put in, all the money we put in all these years, had gone down the drain... (with) no possibility of recoverability," he said, adding that Indonesian tycoon and church investor Wahju Hanafi and his family had to step in to "make good all the losses" suffered in the process.
In the morning before court adjourned for lunch, Kong said that American publicists had a comprehensive promotional plan for what he called a "very major launch" for Ho's album, which was to come more than four years after it was initially slated to and after five Mandarin albums in Asia.
This included pitching major television appearances on shows such as CSI New York and CSI Miami, Gossip Girl and Dancing With The Stars, and for promotion in magazines like Vogue, Glamour, Rolling Stones, Marie Claire and Billboard, added Kong.
At that time, Ho couldn't return to the US as her passport had been impounded after her return to Singapore in June that year. Her passport was only given back to her in May 2013, according to Kong's defence counsel.
Kong also testified that the release of Ho's album would tie in with the success of "Fancy Free", a new single she recorded between August and September 2009 that topped the club dance charts on Billboard in the US, as well as in the UK — this despite her being hospitalised for two operations to treat abdominal adhesions in March and April 2009.
The release of Ho's English album, said Kong, constituted the beginnings of the US leg of the church's Crossover Project -- which state prosecutors argue was a cover for City Harvest leadership channelling church building funds into advancing Ho's secular music career.
The trial continues.
