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Leaders had to be discreet about funds and be creative, says defenceCITY Harvest Church leaders did nothing wrong when they discreetly funded co-founder Ho Yeow Sun's pop music career through a series of companies, a court heard yesterday.迷你倉The move was said to have been necessary so that the church could use Ms Ho, 41, to evangelise with a "secular face" in countries that do not welcome open gospel preaching."You need to be discreet in accessing these countries and spreading the gospel," Senior Counsel Kannan Ramesh put it to church auditor Foong Daw Ching. "You need to be somewhat creative and think a little bit out of the box in terms of how it should be achieved."Mr Foong agreed.City Harvest founder Kong Hee, 49, and five of his deputies were charged last year with misusing about $50 million in church funds to finance Ms Ho's career and to cover this up.Mr Ramesh, acting for church finance manager Sharon Tan, pointed out yesterday, however, that Mr Foong's accounting firm Baker Tilly TFW had vetted the church's financial statements and approved of them.He added that the firm would have been "particularly sensitive" at the time to any possible wrongdoing as it had been recently sued for negligence by another client.Even so, it signed off on the church's financial statements for July 2007 to October 2008 when the accused allegedly invested in sham bonds to finance Ms Ho's career, Mr Ramesh said.He added if the Baker Tilly auditors had felt any of the deals were "unusual, wrong or inappropriate", they could have put a note about the church's accounts in its reports or notified the Commissioner of Charities - but they never did so.Mr Ramesh said Baker Tilly was ideally placed to迷你倉spot problems as it also audited church- linked Xtron Productions - a music production firm which managed Ms Ho at the time and received part of the allegedly misappropriated $50 million."As long as the auditor can see this entire scheme... the fact that the church was investing in Xtron for the purpose of Crossover would not be a disguised fact," said Mr Ramesh. He was referring to the Crossover Project which used Ms Ho's secular pop music to evangelise.Referring to e-mail and text messages between the accused, he added they had even planned to consult external lawyers and Mr Foong, a Baker Tilly partner, before carrying out some of the deals.The auditor's appointment diary mentioned the meeting and one of the accused sent an e-mail summarising their discussion afterwards, Mr Ramesh said.Baker Tilly auditors also once recommended that City Harvest disclose its "related party transaction" with Xtron due to Ms Ho's involvement in both entities, but this was never followed up.Mr Ramesh suggested that a person with "influence" at the firm had reversed the suggestion. But Mr Foong, the firm's managing partner at the time, said he could not comment.zengkun@sph.com.sgAbout the caseCITY Harvest founder Kong Hee and five of his deputies are accused of criminal breach of trust.They are alleged to have funnelled millions meant for the church's new building into sham bond investments in firms Firna and Xtron Productions.Prosecutors say City Harvest accounts were then falsified so the bonds appeared to have been "redeemed". This was allegedly done to fund the pop music career of Kong's wife, Ms Ho Yeow Sun.The defence's cross-examination of auditor Foong Daw Ching is expected to end today.儲存倉