Yang Yin took the stand for the second day during his criminal breach of trust trial on Wednesday (3 August), but the prosecutors found that many of his testimonies were untrue.
The former China tour guide was charged for misappropriating S$1.1 million from a 89-year-old widow, Madam Chung Khin Chun.
In the trial, Yang claimed that he made a phone call to Mdm Chung to tell her that he had passed a driving test and he got S$40,000 from Mdm Chung as a gift for passing the test in March 2009. He said that he used the money to buy a red car in China to improve his driving skill before he came to Singapore.
But, the prosecutor said that according to the cross examination, the money was handed to him in March 2009 when he was in Singapore, the immigration records said that entered Singapore 27 February and left to China on 27 March 2014. It was also revealed that Yang just obtained his driving license in August 2009 in China, months after Mdm Chung transfered the amount of money to his China’s bank account.
The deputy public prosecutor (DPP) Sanjiv Vaswani then stated that he lied to Mdm Chung to get the money from her. DPP Vaswani said that the telephone call that he made was made up or he called the widow, pretended to have left Singapore and lied to her that you had passed the test so that she would offer the money to him.
Chung then replied that he had forgotten the story and the conversations between the two of them could be face-to-face. “To tell you the truth, at that time in 2014, my mind was in a confused state,” he said.
In earlier trial, Yang said that he did not travel frequently after he moved to Singapore. But the DPP showed the immigration record which shown that he had left and re-entered Singapore for 20 times between 11 February 2012 and 4 September 2014 totalling 307 days, despite the fact that Mdm Chung needed him to be around to accompany her.
Yang the said that he had to leave to China to meet his children and the once every two months trip was not “not considered frequent”. He also stated that while he was away, he ensured to call her everyday to make sure that she got everything that she needed and told her domestic helper that he would be away.
Another incident that was brought by DPP Vaswani was that he lied about the 20 days trip he made as a private tour guide to Beijing for Mdm Chung and her long-time friend, Madam Chang Phie Chin. He said that the trip occurred from 20 October to 10 November 2008.
But the DPP produced a letter from Yang dated 4 November 2008 which said that it was a pity that the trip would have ended so soon.
“This trip would have ended before Nov 4. Your evidence is that you were happily having a trip until Nov 10,” said DPP Vaswani.
Yang took the stand for almost two hour yesterday. In his stand, Yang said that in January 2009, Mdm Chung gave him S$4,000 as a gift that she had accepted him as a “grandson”. But the prosecutor said that Yang was only exaggerating for the money was only a red packet for the new year from the widow.
Yang also said that he received S$12,000 for as a red packet for Lunar New Year and referred to a letter that he wrote which dated 6 April 2009. Again the prosecutor said that it was illogical for him to send the letter on the date as the Lunar New Year fell in January that year.
The trial continued this morning (4 August).
