Shanmugam claims Bloomberg had agenda to write about his property sale, was ‘laying a trap’ by seeking his comment

Mr Shanmugam said Bloomberg had “persuade(d)” themselves that they were “responsible media”.

One journalist suggested in the email exchange to do an “own story” based on Mr Low’s record search and ask Mr Shanmugam for comment.

“He will be forced to say something … and (we) can lede with that,” wrote the journalist.

“So I was correct in being sceptical,” said Mr Shanmugam. “They’re already thinking of – in fact, decided to write. But they were hoping that I would comment, and that’s a trap. Because on its own, to write a story on the sale the previous year, it’s difficult to justify it, but if they ask me and I respond, they can lede with that. So they were laying a trap. And I refused to walk in it.”

HITTING A NERVE?

Mr Sreenivasan then asked Mr Shanmugam if the whole issue of the sale of the Astrid Hill property hit a nerve with him.

“No it did not hit a nerve at all. I did the sale,” answered the minister.

“Did the sale being reported – did that hit a nerve?” asked Mr Sreenivasan.

“The sale being reported, with the suggestion that I was facilitating money laundering, that you know, I run a system without checks and balances, and I took advantage of that to keep it under wraps, certainly,” said Mr Shanmugam.

He said he had suspected that Bloomberg had an “agenda” when they approached him for comment, and that their main purpose in writing the article was to get information of his property sale out there.

PUBLIC INTEREST AND NEWSWORTHINESS

At another point, Mr Shanmugam talked at length about whether the sale of his property was newsworthy.

He said he drew a distinction between matters of public interest, which relate to issues of policy and matters that the public are interested in.

He said the sale of his property falls in the second category and not the first. It would be newsworthy to the extent that people would be interested in what he was buying and selling, but the sale was not in “the public interest”.

“It’s a distinction well-known to most lawyers and I draw that distinction,” said Mr Shanmugam.

He then repeated that the sale was not newsworthy in the sense that it was a matter of public interest, but agreed that it was newsworthy in the sense that people would like to gossip about it.

When asked by Mr Sreenivasan why he did not want the sale reported, Mr Shanmugam repeated that it was a private transaction, and that most people buying or selling property would prefer to keep such transactions private.

INTERJECTIONS IN QUESTIONING

The cross-examination also featured several interjections either from Mr Shanmugam’s counsel, the judge, or Mr Shanmugam himself.

For example, Mr Sreenivasan asked Mr Shanmugam on other details of his transaction, such as whether the four weeks it took was considered very quick.

He said a normal conveyance transaction takes eight to 12 weeks.

At this, Mr Singh said he wondered what the relevance of these issues were. Mr Sreenivasan replied that he had one-and-a-half days, referring to the time he had in cross-examination, and that he may use his time.

“You may well do that,” replied Mr Singh, but said that the case was about “responsible journalism, damages and publication”.

“It appears that this opportunity is being used to pry into even more details of a private transaction, so I’m asking what issue do these questions go to?” said Mr Singh.

Mr Sreenivasan maintained that he was setting a timeline in this instance but moved on when told by the judge to do so.

He showed documents and asked if Mr Shanmugam agreed that Mr Low was doing general research on GCBs and was not only focusing on Mr Shanmugam’s transaction.

The minister said he was not sure.

Mr Sreenivasan also asked Mr Shanmugam multiple questions about the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s (URA’s) property market platform Realis, and the Singapore Land Authority’s portal called INLIS (Integrated Land Information Service).

General searches can be done on Realis, but on INLIS, one needs to search for one property at a time.

The judge asked Mr Sreenivasan to move on after he posed repeated questions on this, but Mr Sreenivasan said this was a “very critical point”, because the ministers’ case is that somehow the defendants have been “long in saying that non-caveated deals are harder to trace”.

Mr Singh said he did not agree with Mr Sreenivasan’s “attempt to summarise my case”.

TRIAL ADJOURNS

The hearing ended past 12.30pm, with Mr Sreenivasan saying that Mr Shanmugam had “multiple pressing engagements”. Mr Shanmugam had been slated to speak in parliament on Tuesday on Singapore’s response to the Middle East conflict.

In response, Mr Shanmugam said: “Your honour, I’m used to multiple pressing engagements. It doesn’t faze me.”

“It fazes me,” countered Mr Sreenivasan.

The trial is expected to continue until Friday.