Singapore ministers’ defamation suit against Bloomberg for property article starts

Singapore ministers Tan See Leng (left) and K.

Shanmugam are suing Bloomberg for defamation.

Photo: Facebook/Handout Singapore cabinet ministers K.

Shanmugam and Tan See Leng hauled financial news outlet Bloomberg and one of its reporters to court on Tuesday for defamation over an article that mentioned their personal property transactions.

According to statements of claim filed in the High Court, Coordinating Minister for National Security Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan said parts of the article, titled “Singapore mansion deals are increasingly shrouded in secrecy”, were false, baseless and calculated to disparage and impugn them.

Bloomberg and the reporter who wrote the article, Low De Wei, have denied this through their lawyers.

The trial is set to run from Tuesday to April 16.

The Supreme Court building in Singapore.

Photo: Ronan O’Connell The article, published in December 2024, referred to non-caveated purchases of good-class bungalows in Singapore.

A caveat refers to a legal document buyers submit to the Singapore Land Authority to register interest in a property.

It 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 in nearby Brizay Park.

The ministers in January last year filed separate defamation suits against the media organisation and Low, a real estate reporter, arguing 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”.

They alleged that the statements also implied they sought to hide the deals to avoid scrutiny and hinted at the possibility of money laundering.

Bloomberg and Low denied that the words were defamatory since the article’s focus was on broader market trends such as the privacy benefits of non-caveated transactions and use of trust structures by buyers.

They said it was not defamatory to state that a person used legally permitted mechanisms to maintain privacy.

In the case of Shanmugam, the defence stressed that he was a seller while the article focused on the conduct and motivations of purchasers.

Bloomberg was issued a correction direction under Singapore’s fake news law in December 2024, and ran a correction notice on the article and social media posts but added that it disagreed with the order and stood by its report

原文链接: 南华早报