If you couldn't be bothered about following the developments of the City Harvest Church trial or have decided to give it a miss because you are only looking forward to the verdict, there's just one thing about this case that you ought to know.

And that is: Deputy Public Prosecutor Christopher Ong on Aug. 20, 2014, pretty much showed why he is on the state's prosecution team.

DPP Ong lured Kong Hee with his line of questioning by using an analogy about how buying a $1 million Ferrari is similar to budgeting for the Crossover Project.

This ended with the mega church founder not only admitting that it wasn't beyond him to reverse-engineer his wife Sun Ho's pop star success, but was evidently spending money he didn't have, or else, even knowing how it could all be financed.

The Ferrari analogy works because one can simply substitute "buy a Ferrari" with "spend money on my wife Sun Ho" and you get the point.

Plus, more importantly, DPP Ong also showed that Kong was putting the cart before the horse: He wanted the Ferrari even when he wasn't sure he could pay for it.

(No malice intended with the horse reference.)

The following exchange between DPP Ong and Kong is from City News on Aug. 20, 2014:

The $1m Ferrari Question

This morning in court, the prosecution drew an analogy between the budgeting of the Crossover and buying a Ferrari.

Prosecution: You would not start your search for a car by deciding, "I want to buy a Ferrari", then you go to the Ferrari dealership, you talk to the salesman, you agree a price for the Ferrari — and, really, I have no idea how much a Ferrari is, I think it’s about $1 million. You tell him all the extras you want, special spoilers, things like that, then you go and check you have your bank account and find you have $100,000 and can’t afford a Ferrari. You wouldn’t do it that way, correct?

Kong Hee: Your Honour, if I want to buy a car and, let’s say I know it’s a very good car and I went and do my background research, went to the car showroom, talked to the car dealer, and then I realise that it costs this amount of money, then I go back and check how much I have in the bank. Then I want to find out could I get a bank financing for it, and then I want to find out can I support the bank — I mean, can I support the payment. If I can’t, I won’t go ahead with it.

I think it’s pretty much like that for the US Crossover. We had no track record of doing this before. I didn’t know — none of us on the team in Xtron — how much the US album would be. So we did the budgeting, also a means to find out how much it would cost. Then we would bring it back to the Xtron directors, see if they are comfortable with it, see if we could get bank financing, see if we’re able to get some form of financing. If we’re able to support it, we go ahead with it. If we can’t, then we won’t.

Prosecution: Mr Kong, your response was that you would go to the car showroom, you talk to the car dealer, you find out how much it costs, then you go to the bank and try to find financing. So if you really want the car, you will try to get the funds for it. That’s what you are saying, right?

Kong Hee: I would try, if it’s reasonable.

Related content:

In 2003, City Harvest Church threatened to sue whistleblower. Guess he should be feeling vindicated today.

Top photo via City News

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