Pastor in Singapore church fraud escapes harsher jail term

SINGAPORE — The leader of a glitzy Singapore megachurch convicted of misusing nearly $20 million in church money to advance his wife's music career escaped a harsher prison term yesterday as a court rejected demands to reinstate his original sentence.

The Court of Appeal ruling puts an end to the longrunning case involving millions in church money and raunchy music videos featuring the wife of City Harvest Church leader Kong Hee alongside Hollywood stars.

Kong and five other church leaders were in 2015 convicted of using Sg$24 million ($19.8 million) from a church building fund to help Kong's wife, Sun Ho, 45, break into the English-language market.

They were also found guilty of misappropriating another Sg$26 million from the church to cover their tracks with a complex web of financial transactions.

Kong was sentenced to eight years while the other five received jail terms ranging from 21 months to six years.

With its heady mix of religion, pop and fraud, the case fascinated Singapore, which prides itself on its tough stance on corruption.

The church leaders' sentences were reduced on a technicality last year by the High Court, with the 53-yearold senior pastor's jail term cut to three-and-a-half years.

This triggered a storm of criticism, with more than 4,000 people commenting on it on the Facebook page of local broadsheet The Straits Times.

State prosecutors, who said the case involved the largest amount of charity funds ever misappropriated in Singapore's legal history, had sought for the harsher sentences to be reinstated but were denied by the apex court on Thursday.