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The seven-day oral phase of the defamation suit brought by ministers K. Shanmugam and Tan See Leng against Bloomberg LP and reporter Low De Wei has concluded before Justice Audrey Lim of the Singapore High Court, with closing oral submissions scheduled for 22 May 2026.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the judiciary confirmed the date was fixed following a chambers hearing on 16 April 2026 that was not open to the public. Both defendants formally closed their cases on 15 April 2026. Dates for written submissions will be set at a later stage.<\/p>\n
The defamation lawsuit centres on a 12 December 2024 Bloomberg article headlined “Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy.<\/a>” Shanmugam, who serves as Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs, and Tan See Leng, the Minister for Manpower, allege the article falsely implied they had taken advantage of a lack of checks and disclosure requirements in Singapore’s Good Class Bungalow (GCB) market to conduct their respective property transactions in a non-transparent manner.<\/p>\n The article referred to\u00a0Shanmugam’s sale of a GCB at Queen Astrid Park to UBS Trustees (Singapore) Ltd for S$88 million<\/a>\u00a0in August 2023, and Tan See Leng’s non-caveated purchase of a bungalow in Brizay Park for approximately S$27.3 million in the same year. Both transactions were conducted in 2023. The article was written by Low De Wei, also known as Dexter, who is the second defendant in the proceedings.<\/p>\n Bloomberg and Low deny the article is defamatory. Their position is that the article reported on broader market trends in Singapore’s GCB sector, that the ministers’ transactions were cited as illustrative examples with no suggestion of wrongdoing, and that Low exercised responsible journalism on a matter of public interest. Both defendants filed defences to that effect.<\/p>\n The ministers issued letters of demand to Bloomberg and other outlets on 19 December 2024, seven days after the article’s publication. Bloomberg did not comply. The ministers commenced legal proceedings against Bloomberg and Low in early 2025.<\/p>\n Four witnesses gave evidence across seven hearing days beginning 7 April 2026. Shanmugam and Tan See Leng gave evidence as witnesses for the claimants. Madeleine Lim, a senior executive editor at Bloomberg News, and Low gave evidence as witnesses for the defence.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both ministers are represented by Senior Counsel Davinder Singh of Davinder Singh Chambers. Bloomberg is represented by Remy Choo and Chua Shi Jie of RCLT Law as instructing solicitors, with Senior Counsel Sreenivasan Narayanan as instructed counsel. Senior Counsel Chelva Retnam Rajah appears as instructed counsel for Low personally, with Wong Thai Yong of Wong Thai Yong LLC as instructing solicitor.<\/p>\n Shanmugam was cross-examined across the first three days of the hearing. Tan See Leng was cross-examined on Days 3 and 4. Madeleine Lim gave evidence on Days 4 and 5. Low was cross-examined by Singh across Days 5, 6, and 7, and re-examined on Day 7.<\/p>\n Shanmugam confirmed under cross-examination by Sreenivasan that he does not know who the ultimate beneficial owner of his former GCB is. The property had been transferred to UBS Trustees acting as trustee for The Jasmine Villa Settlement, a licensed trust company, in August 2023. Its ultimate beneficiary’s identity could not be established from public records.<\/p>\n Shanmugam also conceded that Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority property database, known as Realis, does not permit users to search for transactions where no caveat has been filed.<\/p>\n He further conceded that tracking non-caveated transactions using the Singapore Land Authority (SLA)’s Integrated Land Information Service, known as INLIS, required a user to already know the specific property address before a directed search could begin. Approximately 2,000 GCBs would need to be searched individually on INLIS to track all such transactions across the market.<\/p>\n Shanmugam testified that he chose not to respond to Bloomberg’s pre-publication queries because he believed the agency was attempting to find a vehicle to publish a property sale transacted more than a year earlier. He said he believed engaging with Bloomberg’s questions would provide material for the agency to lead with his comment, describing the approach as a trap he refused to walk into.<\/p>\n The full TOC report of Day 1 proceedings<\/a><\/p>\n Shanmugam returned to the stand on Day 2, where he identified two specific statements he alleged Bloomberg’s Singapore bureau chief had made to his press secretary that were false \u2014 that the article was not targeted at him, and that his transaction would appear only as part of a broader trend story. Sreenivasan put to Shanmugam that the first draft of the article in August 2024 contained no reference to him at all. Shanmugam confirmed his name was absent from that document.<\/p>\n Sreenivasan also confirmed with Shanmugam that Bloomberg had made two separate pre-publication approaches and that his press secretary had been expressly told his transaction would appear in the article. Shanmugam agreed on both points.<\/p>\n On Singapore’s anti-money laundering (AML) framework, Shanmugam said the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) report’s description of private-sector gatekeepers was accurate but had to be read in the full context of Singapore’s three-pronged AML strategy. He confirmed that the SLA does not collect general data on landed residential properties acquired through trust companies where the beneficiaries are Singapore citizens.<\/p>\n The full TOC report of Day 2 proceedings<\/a><\/p>\n Shanmugam confirmed on Day 3 that he had known the POFMA correction direction against Bloomberg\u2019s article would be issued before it was made on 23 December 2024.<\/p>\n When Sreenivasan first put the question, Shanmugam said answering would require him to go into the workings of government and indicated he needed legal advice on Section 125 of the Evidence Act,on or regarding government privilege, and the Attorney General’s advice before responding. Sreenivasan clarified he was not seeking the government’s inner workings but only Shanmugam’s personal state of mind at the relevant time. Shanmugam said yes when Justice Lim then put the question directly to Shanmugam.<\/p>\n The POFMA direction was issued by Edwin Tong, then Second Minister for Law, under Shanmugam’s law ministry. Sreenivasan put to Shanmugam that there was a similarity between the points made in Shanmugam’s letter of demand, dated 19 December 2024, and the five subject statements identified in the government’s Factually article accompanying the POFMA direction four days later. Shanmugam agreed: “There is a similarity in the points being made.”<\/p>\n Shanmugam initially said the contents to \u201chis\u201d letter of demand was not made available to those drafting the POFMA direction. In re-examination by Singh later that day, he qualified this, saying he had kept senior colleagues and cabinet informed, and believed he might have shared the letter or summarised his position to some colleagues. Edwin Tong, who signed the direction, was Second Minister for Law in the ministry Shanmugam was then heading.<\/p>\n Regarding damages, Sreenivasan noted Shanmugam’s Nee Soon GRC team had secured a 73.81 per cent vote share at the May 2025 general election, an 11.91 percentage point swing exceeding the national PAP swing of 4.33 percentage points. Shanmugam confirmed the figures and agreed the article had not damaged his standing with the Prime Minister, who had appointed him Coordinating Minister for National Security following the election.<\/p>\n The full TOC report of Day 3 proceedings<\/a><\/p>\n Tan See Leng confirmed on Day 4 that all factual details about his Brizay Park transaction in the article \u2014 the price, location, and date \u2014 were accurate. He confirmed he had received two pre-publication media queries from Low and had not commented on either occasion.<\/p>\n When asked about his reaction to Bloomberg’s description of his transaction as “off the radar,” he said he did not understand why that phrase had been used given that the reporter already had all the relevant facts \u2014 the price, the location, and the year of purchase. Sreenivasan put to Tan See Leng that the phrase had appeared in Low’s October 2024 media query to his press secretary as well as in the published article itself. Tan See Leng agreed. He said the transaction would have appeared in public records eventually and that the difference between a caveated and a non-caveated deal was simply a matter of weeks before it showed up.<\/p>\n The most contested exchange of the day concerned Bloomberg’s decision to remove the article’s paywall on 25 December 2024 following the POFMA correction direction. Madeleine Lim testified that the paywall was removed because a technical constraint on the mobile version prevented the Factually.sg hyperlink from being accessed by non-subscribers, and that removing the paywall across the article was the most expedient solution.<\/p>\n Singh put to Lim that Bloomberg’s own lawyers had advised keeping the paywall up at the time she gave the instruction to remove it, and that the removal was therefore anything but a straightforward compliance measure.<\/p>\n Singh put two further propositions to Lim directly: that the real purpose of removing the paywall had been to enable the public \u2014 not just Bloomberg subscribers \u2014 to read both the article and Bloomberg’s statement that it disagreed with and reserved the right to challenge the government’s position; and that Bloomberg had wanted to be seen to be standing up to the government of Singapore.\u00a0<\/p>\n He put to Lim that in doing so, Bloomberg had aggravated the alleged defamation. Lim disagreed with each characterisation. She said her primary consideration was making the Factually.sg hyperlink accessible as required under the direction, and that removing the paywall was the most practical solution available.<\/p>\n Singh confirmed on the record, in response to a question from Sreenivasan, that the paywall removal argument was formally part of the ministers’ pleaded case on aggravated damages.<\/p>\n The full TOC report of Day 4 proceedings<\/a><\/p>\n Low took the stand on Day 5. Singh examined him at length on the distinction between Realis and INLIS, the use of charged language including “shrouded,” “cloaking,” and “opacity,” and the relationship between consecutive paragraphs in the article describing the SLA’s data collection practices.<\/p>\n Justice Lim intervened to put directly to Low that a reader encountering the phrase “in essence, that means” would draw a connection between the SLA’s data collection limitations and private intermediaries bearing primary responsibility for verifying buyers’ identities. She said she was not interested in what Low had understood the SLA reply to mean but in what the article communicated to its readers.<\/p>\n The full TOC report of Day 5 proceedings<\/a><\/p>\n On Day 6, Singh examined Low over internal Bloomberg editorial emails from August to October 2024 in which senior editors raised questions about government access to trust beneficiary identities and anti-money laundering standards. Low acknowledged he had not told senior editor Emily Cadman that money laundering was not the focus of the article, and that the questions raised by editors Lulu Chen and Serena Ng were relevant to the draft.<\/p>\n Singh also produced a comparison between an October 2024 draft and the published article showing that two paragraphs discussing anti-money laundering measures in the United Kingdom and New York had been moved in the final version to appear between the references to Tan See Leng’s and Shanmugam’s transactions. Low acknowledged the paragraphs had moved but said he could not recall whether he or an editor had made the change. He confirmed the final published article was satisfactory to him in terms of what was said, how it was said, and where it was said.<\/p>\n Justice Lim asked Low to produce the correspondence in which market specialist William Wong had provided the specific details attributed to a paraphrase of him in the article. Justice Lim then called on Sreenivasan to assist Low in locating the relevant material. Sreenivasan was also unable to produce it. Low subsequently acknowledged Wong had not provided the specific details about China-born Singapore residents, rental figures, or conviction numbers contained in that passage.<\/p>\n The full TOC report of Day 6 proceedings<\/a><\/p>\n Singh opened Day 7 by revisiting the article’s origins, pressing Low on the internal email chain from March 2024 in which a Bloomberg colleague described Shanmugam’s GCB sale as a politically sensitive story. Singh also addressed the phrase “political fodder” used in the article, establishing that no source had provided the specific phrase and that it had been inserted by Low or his editor.<\/p>\n Singh further examined Low on the bubble chart purporting to show premiums paid on non-caveated transactions, with Low confirming he had not checked the valuation or asking price of any individual property in the chart.<\/p>\n Singh closed his cross-examination with a submission put directly to Low: “Far from this being an exercise in responsible journalism, this article was the work of a pen dipped in gall.” Low disagreed.<\/p>\n During Sreenivasan’s subsequent re-examination, an internal SLA document was introduced into evidence. The document recorded that when Low had asked the SLA in October 2024 what the reasons were for not requiring the ultimate buyer and transaction value of large properties to be published in a public database, the SLA’s internal position was to decline to mention INLIS to the reporter.<\/p>\n The stated reason was that the SLA does not proactively share the platform with media outlets to minimise the risk of the public extracting identification numbers and ownership details. Low confirmed the SLA had not drawn his attention to INLIS during their engagement. The document was the final substantive piece of evidence before both defendants formally closed their cases at approximately 3.34pm.<\/p>\n In re-examination, when Sreenivasan asked Low directly about Singh’s characterisation of the article, Low told the court he did not know how to express it in English, then cited the Chinese idiom \u676f\u5f13\u86c7\u5f71 \u2014 describing a person who imagines a threat where none exists, as in the classical image of someone mistaking the reflection of a bow in a cup for a snake. He applied the idiom to Singh’s characterisation of him, saying there was no hidden agenda to see. “I had no intention to mislead and did not do what you are alleging,” Low said.<\/p>\n The full TOC report of Day 7 proceedings<\/a><\/p>\n Both defendants’ cases are now formally closed following seven days of oral testimony. Written closing submissions are expected to be filed ahead of an oral hearing fixed for 22 May 2026 before Justice Audrey Lim.\u00a0<\/p>\n The proceedings follow a default judgment delivered by Justice Lim on 31 March 2026 against Terry Xu, chief editor of The Online Citizen, over a TOC article reporting on the same GCB transactions based on Bloomberg’s December 2024 report. Xu was ordered to pay each minister S$210,000 in damages. He did not file a defence.<\/p>\nWitnesses and structure of proceedings<\/h3>\n
Day 1: The UBO admission and the Realis concession<\/h3>\n
Day 2: The two alleged lies and the AML framework<\/h3>\n
Day 3: Prior awareness of the POFMA direction and the letter of demand<\/h3>\n
Day 4: Tan See Leng cross-examination concludes; Madeleine Lim cross-examined on paywall<\/h3>\n
Day 5: Low cross-examined on article framing and the SLA data paragraphs<\/h3>\n
Day 6: Internal editorial emails, paragraph placement, and the William Wong paraphrase<\/h3>\n
Day 7: Story origins, the SLA document, and close of evidence<\/h3>\n
Close of proceedings and next steps<\/h3>\n