5c + 1c ....

what's the 1C? it's Cheating - the last C for the flower botak monk. for buddha's sake, it's definitely NOT Charity!!

July 26, 2009
Monk with the 5Cs
Cash, credit card, car, country club membership and condo - the self-confessed 'modern-day' monk has got them all
By Carolyn Quek

Former Ren Ci chief Ming Yi had a membership at the prestigious The Vines Resort & Country Club in Perth, Australia. -- PHOTOS: WONG KWAI CHOW, INTERNET

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A BUDDHIST monk for 25 years, former Ren Ci chief Ming Yi also achieved the Singapore dream of the five Cs.

He had cash - at one stage, he had $570,000 in his personal bank account.

He had credit cards - at least nine from various banks bore his real name of Goh Kah Heng. He also held at least three supplementary cards for his personal assistant Raymond Yeung.

He had condominium units - he bought and sold at least six private properties in Singapore and Australia over 20 years.

He had cars - he bought at least three BMWs in six years, including one for Yeung.

And he had a country club membership - at the prestigious The Vines Resort & Country Club in Perth.

The spending habits of the monk were revealed in court over the past week, where Ming Yi, 47, and Yeung, 34, face charges of conspiring to falsify a Ren Ci payment voucher and of giving false information.

The prosecution attempted to paint him out to be a spendthrift who was lax with his own money, and possibly that of the charity he founded too.

By his own admission, Ming Yi was a 'modern-day monk'.

'Buddhist monks, we are no longer living in the mountains, we are not living in the forest. We are in the city now,' he said when responding to a question about how religious people were very different now.

Read the full story in The Sunday Times today.

carolynq@sph.com.sg