As the story unfolds, we see more & more dirty linings
exposed in the public. The monk is not as innocent as it seems
intially. The more he defends himself, the more ridiculous he
gets.
(Extract)
One terse exchange took place when DPP
Singh suggested that Ming Yi’s ‘evidence that you were so
selflessly motivated to look after Ren Ci and Fook Hai Ch’an
(Monastery)’ was ‘an embellishment’.
The monk said: ‘I think actions speak louder than words.’ He
added that others would know what he had done for Ren Ci.
To that, DPP Singh said: ‘Yes, indeed,
your actions did speak louder than words in Perth.’
Ming Yi: ‘I have my flaws, but that does not mean that I am not
taking good care of Ren Ci and Foo Hai Ch’an.’
DPP Singh: ‘You looked after yourself when
Ren Ci needed money.’
Ming Yi: ‘I took good care of the patients.’
DPP Singh: ‘You looked after
yourself.’
Ming Yi: ‘I looked after myself but also the patients.’
Buying, buying
The prosecution produced documents showing evidence of the
various big-ticket purchases Ming Yi made. The first, bought in the
late ‘80s, was a piece of property in Mountbatten Road that housed
Chao Yin lodge, run by Ming Yi.
It was bought under his name and financed by donations from
devotees and a mortgage loan from a bank. He used money from the
sale of this property to buy a two-storey semi-detached house in
Bedok Ria Crescent where the lodge was relocated.
Ming Yi later bought an apartment at The Atria at Meyer
Road.
DPP Singh asked: ‘Between 1994 and 1998,
while Ren Ci was struggling in finances, you yourself had no
problems buying a house, buying land, buying a BMW, buying a horse, being a country club member.
Correct?’
‘Yes,’ Ming Yi replied.
The DPP then asked: ‘So while Ren Ci and
Foo Hai Ch’an were having financial difficulties, you were not? Did
you think you should have put money in Ren Ci instead of buying
things for yourself?’
He added: ‘You believe in helping people, Ren Ci was your baby…
what you have not told the court today is that you were building a
property empire by yourself. How do you gel these?’
Ming Yi said that he bought the Atria apartment as an investment
for Ren Ci. ‘Unfortunately, I’m not a person who knows how to
manage property.’
He added that he did think of channelling his own money to Ren
Ci’s coffers to help his ailing organisation and had suggested it
to a few of his board members.
But they advised against it, he said.
Ming Yi’s first overseas property buy was a piece of land in
Perth. The joint owner was Mr Wee Beng Seng, an ex-treasurer of Ren
Ci.
He then had a house built for him in Perth.
DPP Singh asked: ‘You want the court to
believe that you’re trying to do your utmost as far as Ren Ci was
concerned. Isn’t it true that you were enjoying the good life in
Perth?’
Ming Yi replied that he ‘did not really go and stay there. I was
there only three to four times’. Under further cross-examination,
Ming Yi later said that he went to Perth once or twice a year.
In Perth, he also bought a BMW S540
executive series car.
But looking puzzled when it was raised by DPP Singh, he said he could not recall ‘this whole thing’
even after he had pored over the offer-to-purchase document shown
to him. He repeatedly claimed he could not remember buying the
car.
DPP Singh persisted: ‘Even if you don’t
remember this, are you satisfied that this is your signature?’
Ming Yi said he was.
When asked if he had made any other purchases, he revealed that
he had bought a horse in Perth.
‘I was told that the horses need somebody to rear them, but
later on, I found that the owner used it to go horse-racing… I
thought he was meant to look after the horse, but not for racing
purposes,’ he said.
The court was also told that Ming Yi and Mr Wee were joint
members of the Vines Golf & Country Club in Perth, ‘one of the
more upmarket resorts in Western Australia’, DPP Singh said.
Ming Yi’s other purchases: A house in Seattle in the US, a
two-storey bungalow and a penthouse in Melbourne, both of which he
bought with Yeung.
When asked by DPP Singh if it was ‘okay
for a monk to own properties in various parts of the world’ and if
that was ‘what a modern monk does’, he replied: ‘That’s what a lot
of people do.’
DPP Singh suggested that Ming Yi ‘believed
in luxury’.
But the monk said: ‘I think I can be very flexible. I can go to
a village in Sri Lanka to stay there, I can go to villages in China
and stay there, northern part of China to stay there, Thailand to
stay there.’
The court also learnt that Ming Yi shared an Australian Citibank
account with Mr Wee to finance their Australian expenses.
Asked about two withdrawals of A$900 ($1,000) made from an
ATM at Burswood Casino in Perth in 2002, Ming
Yi said it was Mr Wee who had made the withdrawals.
‘From birth to now, I’ve never been to any casino,’ Ming Yi
said.
He also admitted that diving was one of his hobbies and that he
had gone on diving holidays. But no details of these holidays were
revealed in court.
__________
This article was first published in The New Paper.
Adapted from
http://www.asiaone.com/News/The%2BNew%2BPaper/S…