\n<\/p>\n
Mr Shanmugam said at one point that Bloomberg was “just finding a way” to put out details of his property transaction.<\/p>\n
The Astrid Hill GCB had been sold in 2023, with the legal owner of the property being UBS Trustees Singapore. Mr Shanmugam confirmed that as of Tuesday, he did not know the identity of the ultimate beneficial owner.<\/p>\n
The minister said Bloomberg had refused to disclose certain emails but had been ordered by the court to produce them, and the emails showed that Bloomberg had “all along intended to publish this about me”.<\/p>\n
He said Bloomberg was “struggling” to find an angle and to find an “excuse and a reason” to justify why they were publishing an article about a private transaction.<\/p>\n
He was allowed to refer the court to certain internal exchanges within Bloomberg, where a person not identified in open court told Mr Low that they heard from a source that a “favourite minister” \u2013 referring to Mr Shanmugam \u2013 recently sold his GCB in Astrid Hill probably for an “eye-watering sum”.<\/p>\n
Mr Low responded saying he had seen the property records and that the sale was done the year before.<\/p>\n
A woman, who Mr Shanmugam identified as Joyce Koh, then said this was “quite the politically sensitive story”, especially with elections approaching at the time.<\/p>\n
According to Mr Shanmugam, Mr Low replied with certain information about Mr Shanmugam’s house and said that one possible way to get it was to “wrap it into a broader story”.<\/p>\n
“So the purpose was to talk about my sale, but wrap it in a bigger story on how rich people are using trusts to buy property in Singapore,” Mr Shanmugam told the court.<\/p>\n
Mr Shanmugam also added that Mr Low later replied in the email chain: “If you think a standalone is necessary, let me know.”<\/p>\n
On this, Mr Shanmugam said: “So much for ‘yours is only by-the-by, we’re not really interested in you’.”<\/p>\n
Referring to the email chain, Mr Shanmugam quoted someone from Bloomberg saying that he was “the most powerful minister” in Singapore. Mr Shanmugam disagreed with this.<\/p>\n
He also disagreed with what Mr Low wrote in another line that the sale was “definitely a hush-hush affair”.<\/p>\n
“This set of emails shows what exactly was the intention, and how they want to get other facts in to wrap around, but the primary target, the primary aim, was to get this sale (of my house) out in the public,” said Mr Shanmugam.<\/p>\n
He said a journalist had asked why the sale was relevant now when it had occurred over a year before, and someone else said that Mr Shanmugam was “the most powerful” in Singapore and “controls everything”, adding that Mr Shanmugam was “lying to us”.<\/p>\n
“It’s full of venom,” Mr Shanmugam told the court, pointing to the internal Bloomberg exchanges. “It’s venomous and full of nastiness.”<\/p>\n
He went on to quote the Bloomberg exchanges which stated that apart from the “little known” The Online Citizen, “no one else including any mainstream media has reported it”, referring to the sale of Mr Shanmugam’s house.<\/p>\n
Mr Shanmugam said Bloomberg had “persuade(d)” themselves that they were “responsible media”.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“He will be forced to say something … and (we) can lede with that,” wrote the journalist.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Mr Sreenivasan then asked Mr Shanmugam if the whole issue of the sale of the Astrid Hill property hit a nerve with him.<\/p>\n
“No it did not hit a nerve at all. I did the sale,” answered the minister.<\/p>\n
“Did the sale being reported – did that hit a nerve?” asked Mr Sreenivasan.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
At another point, Mr Shanmugam talked at length about whether the sale of his property was newsworthy.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n
“It’s a distinction well-known to most lawyers and I draw that distinction,” said Mr Shanmugam.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The cross-examination also featured several interjections either from Mr Shanmugam’s counsel, the judge, or Mr Shanmugam himself.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He said a normal conveyance transaction takes eight to 12 weeks.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“You may well do that,” replied Mr Singh, but said that the case was about “responsible journalism, damages and publication”.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
Mr Sreenivasan maintained that he was setting a timeline in this instance but moved on when told by the judge to do so.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The minister said he was not sure.<\/p>\n
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).<\/p>\n
General searches can be done on Realis, but on INLIS, one needs to search for one property at a time.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n
Mr Singh said he did not agree with Mr Sreenivasan’s “attempt to summarise my case”.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In response, Mr Shanmugam said: “Your honour, I’m used to multiple pressing engagements. It doesn’t faze me.”<\/p>\n
“It fazes me,” countered Mr Sreenivasan.<\/p>\n
The trial is expected to continue until Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n