Bloomberg defends right to contest lawsuits as Singapore ministers seek damages beyond TOC award in GCB trial

Justice Audrey Lim reserved her verdict on 22 May 2026 in two linked defamation actions arising from a Bloomberg article published on 12 December 2024 about Good Class Bungalow (GCB) transactions in Singapore.

The two actions — Originating Claim 11 (OC 11) brought by K. Shanmugam and Originating Claim 12 (OC 12) brought by Dr Tan See Leng — name Bloomberg LP, the United States-based financial news and media organisation that published the article, as first defendant and Low De Wei, its reporter, as second defendant in each action.

The suit arises from an article published by Bloomberg on 12 December 2024, headlined “Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy.” Shanmugam and Tan allege the article falsely implied they had conducted their respective Good Class Bungalow transactions non-transparently by exploiting gaps in Singapore’s property disclosure framework.

The article referenced Shanmugam’s sale of his former home in the Queen Astrid Park area to UBS Trustees for S$88 million, and Tan See Leng’s non-caveated purchase of a bungalow in Brizay Park for approximately S$27.3 million, both transacted in 2023. Both ministers deny any impropriety.

Senior Counsel Davinder Singh appeared for both ministers. Senior Counsel Sreenivasan Narayanan appeared for Bloomberg LP, instructed by Remy Choo and Chua Shi Jie of RCLT Law. Senior Counsel Chelva Retnam Rajah appeared for Low, instructed by Wong Thai Yong of the eponymous firm.

Justice Lim confirmed at the outset that each side had been allocated 30 minutes collectively for oral submissions.

The hearing was held in a smaller courtroom with a public seating capacity of 12, which was extended to accommodate 15 persons after K. Shanmugam’s press secretary arrived with two additional attendees. More than 10 members of the public remained outside the courtroom, gallery tickets having been fully issued. Both ministers were not personally present in court.

When invited to open, Singh indicated that convention required the defendants to go first, with the claimants to reply. Sreenivasan accordingly delivered Bloomberg’s submissions first.

Bloomberg’s submissions on meaning

Sreenivasan opened by describing the defendants’ position as consistent from the outset: they had not sought to justify the article on the basis of the pleaded defamatory meaning because, in their submission, the article did not bear that meaning.

The claimants, he submitted, were urging “the most defamatory meaning conceivable,” while the defendants’ case rested on a plain and ordinary reading of the article by the ordinary reasonable reader.

He submitted that Justice Audrey Lim should return to 12 December 2024 — the date of publication — and ask what an ordinary reasonable reader would have understood at that moment. The court must, he said, disregard the sensitivity of the claimants and the narratives constructed on both sides during cross-examination.

The article reported on a matter of genuine public concern, Sreenivasan submitted: the significant rise in GCB prices, the growing role of wealthy new migrants in that trend, and the increasing use of trust structures that prevented public identification of ultimate buyers.

He noted that a Business Times article on GCBs appeared that very morning, illustrating that the subject remained a live matter of public interest.

The article was qualified in its language, Sreenivasan submitted: GCB transactions without caveats were described as “harder to track, not impossible to track.” The article did not suggest the government lacked the relevant information, and did not suggest either claimant was involved in money laundering.

On the property databases mentioned in the article, Sreenivasan submitted that the text provided a functional description of two available platforms — one broadly searchable and one requiring directed searches — without naming them explicitly. Members of the public familiar with property searches would understand from the description what databases were being referred to.

On the pleaded defamatory meaning

Sreenivasan noted that the pleaded defamatory meaning was expressed in identical terms in both OC 11 and OC 12, despite the claimant in OC 11 being a seller and the claimant in OC 12 being a buyer.

Shanmugam as a seller, Sreenivasan submitted, could not dictate whether his purchaser chose to file a caveat or use a trust structure. Sreenivasan put it directly: Shanmugam, his lawyers, and his bankers did not know the identity of the buyer behind the trust that purchased the minister’s GCB. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” he submitted.

Shanmugam had himself acknowledged in cross-examination that he did not know, and had never known, the identity of the buyer. If the article’s premise was that trust structures prevented public identification of buyers, Sreenivasan submitted, that premise was made out by the OC 11 transaction itself.

In OC 12, Sreenivasan submitted that Dr Tan was referred to in only one line of the article. Wanting privacy by not filing a caveat did not carry a defamatory meaning. The “only possible defamatory connotation,” he submitted, was money laundering — and even that was presented in the article as a possibility rather than an assertion.

Both claimants had confirmed in cross-examination, Sreenivasan submitted, that the specific facts stated about them in the article were true and correct. There was no lie, no allegation of impropriety, and no allegation of dishonesty or illegality on the face of the article.

Responsible journalism

On the responsible journalism defence, Sreenivasan argued that the defence applied in Singapore law and was the appropriate vehicle for the defendants’ case. The defendants had taken care in their reporting, he submitted, and there was no malice involved.

He referred to a Jamaican Privy Council decision cited in submissions as Bunek, which he said made clear that not all possible interpretations of an article needed to be put to the persons described, particularly where the interpretation was not apparent on the face of the article.

Sreenivasan also referred to a Malaysian Federal Court decision placed before the court the previous day, noting that Article 10 of Malaysia’s Federal Constitution was in similar terms to Article 14 of Singapore’s Constitution. He invited the court to adopt the reasoning and be persuaded by it.

On malice, Sreenivasan submitted that a genuine belief that the article did not bear the pleaded defamatory meaning could not constitute malice. He added that reckless disregard for the truth had not been specifically pleaded.

On the paywall removal and addendum, Sreenivasan submitted that Madeleine Lim had given a clear explanation under vigorous cross-examination and had maintained it. Bloomberg had effected the correction direction within six hours of it being issued, removing the paywall as a technical compliance step to ensure the correction notice was visible to readers.

The addendum asserting that Bloomberg stood by its reporting was issued 11 days after the article’s original publication. Sreenivasan submitted there was ample explanation for the pace of its publication given time-zone differences between Bloomberg’s technical team and its Singapore staff.

Sreenivasan submitted that Bloomberg had chosen not to report on its own proceedings out of respect for the court. There had been no doubling down and no further articles directed to public attention.

Sreenivasan concluded by reading from paragraph three of the Bloomberg article, which described the two databases as a database of caveats and a database of ownership records requiring directed searches.

He submitted this was an accurate functional description consistent with the government’s own internal communications as disclosed in the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) email produced in evidence.

Singh’s reply submissions — meaning

Singh, replying for the ministers, submitted that the defendants’ closing written submissions contained no section devoted to how an ordinary reasonable reader would actually read the article. The submissions addressed evidence, responsible journalism, falsity, and malice, but not the reader’s perspective.

The reason, he submitted, was that on a plain reading the article could not bear the meaning the defendants claimed. The defendants had instead sought to confuse and conflate issues, rewriting the article in their submissions by omitting words from the original and inserting words that did not appear in the text.

Responding to the defendants’ argument that the article concerned only what was publicly knowable about GCB transactions, Singh called the argument “absurd.”

The article had called for stronger checks and balances and mandatory disclosure rules — measures that were not directed at the public but at government and regulatory authorities.

Singh identified a series of phrases said to appear in the defendants’ submissions but not in the article: references to “public disclosure rules,” a claim that GCB transactions were “not absolutely secret,” words adding that property transactions fell “under the radar of the real estate industry and the public,” and a phrase asserting that not filing a caveat was “not in and of itself problematic.”

He submitted that the defendants’ pleaded meaning made no reference to the words “secret,” “cloaking,” “shroud,” or “opacity” — terms that featured prominently in the defendants’ own article.

Shanmugam’s transaction and “political fodder”

On OC 11, Singh submitted that the article devoted more paragraphs to Shanmugam’s sale than to any other individual transaction referenced in the article.

He drew attention to a passage describing the sale as “political fodder” and quoting an opposition party leader questioning how the bungalow’s valuation had been determined and who the new owner was. If the article was concerned only with purchases by naturalised citizens and foreigners, Singh asked why had it been necessary to mention Shanmugam’s sale and describe it as “political fodder”.

Singh submitted that the defendants’ written submissions used the phrase without providing any explanation of how an ordinary reader would understand those words.

The “nut graf” and money laundering

Singh submitted that Low had acknowledged on the stand that the “nut graf” — the central proposition of the article — concerned anti-money laundering. The defendants’ written submissions had since characterised the nut graf as two different paragraphs unrelated to money laundering.

He submitted this was a significant shift from the evidence given at trial and invited the court to take note of it when assessing the defendants’ credibility.

On paragraphs 28 to 31 of the article, addressing money laundering measures and mandatory disclosure rules, Singh submitted that an ordinary reasonable reader would understand the government to be ignorant of buyers’ identities and sources of wealth and to have taken no comparable action to regulators in New York and the United Kingdom.

Singh submitted that the defendants’ closing submissions had not given the court a complete picture of paragraph 28, having reproduced it selectively.

Targeting and internal documents

Pointing to internal Bloomberg emails, Singh submitted that the publication showed a plan as early as March 2024 to find a way to create a story referencing both claimants. The very first draft of the article in August 2024, ostensibly about purchases, had mentioned Shanmugam — a seller — from the outset. He submitted that this was consistent with a plan to use the story as a vehicle to mention both ministers.

He also referred to internal Bloomberg communications in which editors had raised the question of whether the article amounted to “naming and shaming” individuals.

He submitted that Low’s acknowledgment in cross-examination that the article’s “nut graf” concerned anti-money laundering was inconsistent with his stated position that the article had nothing to do with money laundering.

Singh further submitted that Low had deliberately downplayed Singapore’s anti-money laundering safeguards despite having been provided with ministerial speeches and other materials detailing the country’s anti-money laundering framework.

Responsible journalism and Singapore law

On the responsible journalism defence, Singh submitted that the defence does not apply in Singapore law. He submitted that the Court of Appeal had not adopted the Reynolds qualified privilege framework, and that no authority established it as part of Singapore’s law of defamation.

He further submitted that even if the defence were available, Bloomberg had failed to meet its requirements. Low had never considered the full range of possible meanings available to him. He had considered only his own narrow interpretation and had not addressed the possibility that the article bore the pleaded defamatory meaning.

On the SLA email, Singh submitted it had been distorted in the defendants’ submissions. The email had been sent by Low to the SLA with questions about government data, and was not an opportunity given to the claimants to respond. Singh also noted that Low had queried the SLA about the existence of a database while already knowing about INLIS, a point Singh said exposed the internal inconsistency in the defendants’ account of how the article was reported.

POFMA and the defamation trial

Singh submitted that Bloomberg had not challenged the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) correction direction, despite having published a statement standing by its reporting.

He submitted that Bloomberg was now using the defamation proceedings as an impermissible “backdoor” to challenge alleged falsehoods in a forum other than the statutory one provided for that purpose.

He submitted that the decision to remove the paywall — characterised by Bloomberg as a step to facilitate compliance with the POFMA correction direction — was in fact an active step to draw wider public attention to the article at a time when Bloomberg was publicly claiming to stand by its reporting.

Collusion allegation

Singh drew the court’s attention to paragraph 171 of the defendants’ closing written submissions, which he read aloud.

The paragraph noted that the POFMA correction direction was issued four days after the letters of demand, that the letter of demand was in similar terms to the alleged falsehoods in the correction direction, and that the safest course for the court was to disregard the POFMA correction direction as a factor for aggravated damages.

The proximity in time and the similarity in language between the two documents, the defendants submitted, raised a question about whether the correction direction could be treated as an independent determination of falsity — and it was on that basis that they invited the court to set it aside when assessing aggravated damages.

Singh submitted that the only reasonable reading of the paragraph was that it implied collusion between the claimants, the POFMA office, and the Cabinet in the issuing of the correction direction.

He submitted this was an extraordinary allegation that had not been put to either claimant during cross-examination, as required under the rule in Browne v Dunn. He called it “completely unacceptable” and a further instance of aggravated conduct.

Damages and costs

Singh submitted that the case was unprecedented in scale of malice and aggravation. He told the court that his clients were leaving the quantum of damages to the court, but were seeking a figure exceeding that recently ordered in related defamation proceedings against Terry Xu, Chief Editor of The Online Citizen (TOC).

A court had on 31 March 2026 ordered Xu to pay both ministers a combined S$420,000 — S$210,000 per minister — for defaming them in a separate article relating to the same GCB transactions.

Singh also sought indemnity costs against both defendants. Both requests were foreshadowed in the claimants’ written closing submissions.

He argued that malice was evident from Bloomberg’s internal documents; from the decision by Madeleine Lim to publish an addendum asserting that Bloomberg stood by its reporting without seeking clarification from Low about the ministers’ allegations; and from the paywall removal, which he characterised as taking active steps to maximise public exposure to the article.

He further pointed to the defendants’ suppression of documents during proceedings, which had obliged the court to issue an unless order compelling disclosure.

That conduct, he told the court, placed the scale of the defendants’ aggravation beyond any comparable precedent and supported an award of damages exceeding that ordered in the related proceedings against Xu.

Sreenivasan’s brief reply

Sreenivasan returned briefly to address several points.

He denied that paragraph 171 of Bloomberg’s closing written submissions had implied or alleged collusion. The paragraph had flagged a sequence of events and suggested the court exercise caution in treating the POFMA correction direction as an aggravating factor — not to assert coordinated misconduct.

He noted that the claimant in OC 11 had not been asked whether he shared the letter of demand with Cabinet colleagues before or after the correction direction was issued.

On document production, Sreenivasan acknowledged the process had been difficult and piecemeal and that mistakes had been made, involving more than 500,000 documents requiring computer-assisted searches. He submitted it was unfair to describe the process as suppression, and that all court orders had been fully complied with.

On questions about the timing of the OC 11 transaction, he submitted he had stopped when the court indicated the line of questioning should not proceed.

On the reading out of email addresses from the SLA email, he submitted the document had been provided to him on the final day of evidence while Low remained on the stand. Reading the addresses aloud was, he said, the only means available in open court to communicate a last-minute document to a witness still under examination.

Singh submitted that Bloomberg had known from the outset that its pleaded meaning was untenable, and had nonetheless chosen to defend the action in order to come into open court and, in his submission, run down the two ministers. The defence itself, he submitted, was the instrument of harm.

Sreenivasan submitted in closing that the claimants’ position, if accepted, would mean that any defendant who vigorously defended a defamation action would face aggravated damages on that basis alone. He submitted that was not the law.

Justice Lim reserved her verdict after hearing submissions. No date for the delivery of judgment was fixed.

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