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Jean Iau

The High Court in Singapore has awarded two cabinet ministers S$230,000 (US$177,860) each in damages following a defamation trial involving financial news outlet Bloomberg and one of its reporters over the officials’ property transactions.
In January last year, K. Shanmugam, the coordinating minister for national security, and Tan See Leng, the manpower chief, filed separate suits against Bloomberg and its reporter Low De Wei over a story titled “Singapore mansion deals are increasingly shrouded in secrecy”.
The article reported that Shanmugam used a trust structure to sell a bungalow in the affluent neighbourhood of Queen Astrid Park and mentioned Tan’s non-caveated purchase of a good class bungalow (GCB) in nearby Brizay Park.
In a written judgment released on Tuesday, Justice Audrey Lim awarded each minister S$170,000 in general damages and S$60,000 in aggravated damages.
Lim said the article conveyed to the ordinary reader that the current system lacked checks and balances and disclosure requirements where non-caveated GCB or mansion transactions were allowed to be kept secret, and that Tan and Shanmugam conducted their transactions non-transparently to take advantage of this.
Lim disagreed with the defendants who argued that the article contained nothing defamatory and was instead concerned with trends in GCB purchases in Singapore and how buyers forgo a caveat to enjoy privacy benefits.
“The defamatory character … lies not in any explicit accusation but in the inference it invites, ie, the claimants sought to hide their transactions and avoid scrutiny that might extend to the possibility of money laundering,” Lim wrote in a 71-page judgment.
She said the arrangement of the paragraphs, including how other jurisdictions such as Britain and New York handled money laundering came before the mention of Shanmugam’s transaction, reinforced the impression that secrecy afforded by non-caveated transactions allowed those involved to avoid scrutiny that might extend to the possibility of money laundering.
“The article is defamatory of both claimants: an allegation that a person has deliberately structured his property dealings to escape examination for possible money laundering plainly tends to lower him in the estimation of right-thinking members of society,” Lim said.

The ministers had argued that the statements in the article were understood to mean that they had “taken advantage of there being no checks and balances or disclosure requirements” by transacting properties in “a non-transparent manner”.
In his closing arguments in May, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh, representing the two ministers, urged the court to reject the defendants’ argument that the article was merely about publicly known GCB transactions.
Singh said the financial news outlet harboured “unprecedented” malice in the publication and handling of the article about the purchase of GCBs in Singapore as he sought damages exceeding those against The Online Citizen chief editor Terry Xu.
Xu was ordered to pay S$574,000 to Shanmugam and Tan in another defamation case related to the article.
Lim wrote on Tuesday that the defamation in the case involving the ministers was graver than Xu’s.
“The allegation against the claimants here suggests they might be involved in potential serious criminal conduct (ie, money laundering). Moreover, Bloomberg is an established and internationally renowned media entity with a higher standing and reputation, and substantially larger following,” Lim said.
Senior Counsel Sreenivasan Narayanan, who represented Bloomberg, had argued that the claimants were advancing the “most defamatory meaning conceivable”, while their case was based on a “plain and ordinary” reading of the article.
Lim found that the defendants had acted with malice, defined in defamation cases as “any ill will, spite or some wrong or improper motive”.

During the trial, Shanmugam testified that the emails, in which journalists referred to him as their “favourite minister” who sold his bungalow for an “eye-watering sum”, led him to believe he was being targeted and showed that the story was a means to justify writing about his own transaction.
“People talk about powerful people behind their back all the time,” Sreenivasan said, adding that the article mentioned there were websites for the public to access real estate ownership, although the portal was not named explicitly.
Singh urged the court to reject the defence’s “absurd” argument that the article was about public knowledge of GCBs in Singapore, noting that the story called for checks and balances and mandatory disclosure rules.
The defence sought to “confuse and conflate”, and had introduced into the trial words and explanations not in the story, such as Inlis, to support their arguments, he said.
The defence had “conveniently forgotten” to mention that the article stated that Shanmugam’s transaction had become “political fodder”, Singh said. “Not one attempt is made to explain how a reader would understand those words.”
Following the judgment on Tuesday, Bloomberg Editor-in-chief John Micklethwait said the outlet was disappointed with the ruling but would respect it, and that the company continued to stand by its newsroom and Low.
“We argued at trial that our reporting was accurate and served an important public interest, and we continue to believe that the ministers have imposed an extremely strained meaning on what was a solid story,” Micklethwait said, as quoted by Bloomberg.
The news outlet was similarly embroiled in a legal case against Singapore ministers in 2002. It apologised and paid S$595,000 in damages for an article that suggested nepotism in the appointment of then deputy prime minister Lee Hsien Loong’s wife Ho Ching as executive director of Temasek Holdings.


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The judge found the defendants had acted with malice in the article mentioning the ministers’ personal property deals


The judge found the defendants had acted with malice in the article mentioning the ministers’ personal property deals.


K Shanmugam

Singapore ministers each awarded US$177,860 in damages in Bloomberg defamation suit

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The judge found the defendants had acted with malice in the article mentioning the ministers’ personal property deals

The judge found the defendants had acted with malice in the article mentioning the ministers’ personal property deals