A Singaporean pastor has been convicted for using $36m of church money to fund his wife’s rap career

Six leaders of a Singaporean mega-church have been convicted of a $36 million fraud after diverting the donations of church members into a failed project to turn the G.O’s wife, Sun Ho, into a global

rap music star.

The owner of the church, Kong Hee, and 5 aides failed to persuade the judge that the scheme was a legitimate use of church funds to spread God’s word to the secular world by helping his wife break into US music market.

Sun Ho, 43, who performed under the stage name ‘SUN aka Geisha’, singing sexually-charged lyrics in skimpily-clad outfits in series of glitzy music videos, was not accused of any wrongdoing in the venture.

In 2007, she appeared in a music video with Wyclef Jean. Kong and 5 other church leaders were convicted of stealing $17m ear-marked for building and investments by using fake bond investments to mask the spending on Ms Ho’s career.

The court found that they used a further $18.5m to try to hide the first fraud from auditors. Kong and his wife founded the City Harvest Church in 1989 and by last year it had grown into one of Singapore’s largest church, with a congregation of 14,500.

Congregants even stormed the court to back their pastor that the funds were used to finance a “crossover project” to use Ms Ho as the public face and voice of a mission to use pop music to reach non-believers overseas.

In Singapore, the penalty for criminal breach of trust is life imprisonment, while for falsifying accounts, the penalty is a maximum of 10 years in jail. Ms Ho moved to LA in 2009 in an attempt to break into the Hollywood music world. This scandal however ended her ambitions. He will be sentenced on November, 20 .

credit:instablog9ja