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The defamation suit against Bloomberg was about protecting their personal integrity, reputations, and the standing of their public offices, said Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Dr Tan See Leng on Tuesday (July 15) night.<\/p>\n
In separate Facebook posts after the High Court’s judgement, both ministers also reiterated that they would donate the damages to charity.<\/p>\n
Shanmugam, who is also Coordinating Minister for National Security, summarised the court’s findings, noting that the conduct of Bloomberg News and its reporter Low Da Wei was grave and warranted aggravated damages.<\/p>\n
The article’s allegations, he said, had “directly impugned our personal integrity, character and professional reputation”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Apart from our personal reputation, these malicious statements also attacked the standing of the Ministerial office and us as senior public leaders,” the home affairs minister added.<\/p>\n
He went on to explain why he decided to bring about the defamation proceedings, despite having to subject himself to public scrutiny and cross-examination in court.<\/p>\n
“If irresponsible outlets like Bloomberg get away with publishing lies and falsehoods about public officers, it will set a new norm.<\/p>\n
“It will mean that anyone wanting to serve the public will have to face an additional obstacle \u2013 that well-funded organisations like Bloomberg will use lies to attack them, put them down and seek to destroy their reputations.”<\/p>\n
Shanmugam noted that this had happened in other countries, discouraging capable people from entering public service and ultimately affecting public interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr Tan, who is also Minister-in-charge of Energy and Science and Technology, made a similar point in his Facebook post, saying the defamation suit was about protecting his integrity and reputation, and the standing of his public office.<\/p>\n
The manpower minister said political office holders must discharge their duties with integrity and be open to scrutiny and legitimate criticism but added that the media must be responsible too.<\/p>\n
“Media reporting should be fair and accurate, particularly where it concerns allegations that can seriously damage an individual\u2019s reputation,” Dr Tan said.<\/p>\n
He ended his post by saying that he remains focused on the work of serving Singapore and Singaporeans.<\/p>\n
On December 12, 2024, Bloomberg published an article titled “Singapore mansion deals are increasingly shrouded in secrecy,” which referenced transactions involving Good Class Bungalow (GCBs) in Singapore.<\/p>\n
Among the transactions highlighted were Dr Tan’s non-caveated purchase of a Brizay Park bungalow for about $27.3 million, and Shanmugam’s sale of his former Queen Astrid Park home to UBS Trustees for $88 million, both in 2023.<\/p>\n
During the trial, the court was shown Bloomberg’s internal correspondence from March 12, 2024. In an email, Bloomberg team leader Joyce Koh had emailed Low Da Wei, saying “our favourite minister Shan recently sold his GCB at Queen Astrid”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Low replied that the deal had taken place in 2023 and added that “in the spirit of minister GCB transactions, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng also bought a GCB last year in Bukit Timah”.<\/p>\n
The pair also discussed how to “wrap” the transactions into a “broader story”, according to an email dated March 13.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Justice Audrey Lim wrote in her judgement: “The dominant purpose behind the article was to publish a story about the claimants, in particular about their (GCB) transactions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The broader narrative of how wealthy individuals in Singapore use non-caveated transactions and trust structures to keep their dealings secret or ‘off-radar’ was the cover \u200bdevised to carry that story.”<\/p>\n
The judge also found Bloomberg’s description of the opacity of local government records<\/a> relating to non-caveated bungalow transactions to be “reckless and false”.<\/p>\n She noted that such records were publicly available through the Singapore Land Authority’s Integrated Land Information Service, a fact Low knew because he had used the platform in the course of his reporting.<\/p>\n Justice Lim also pointed out that Bloomberg’s action of removing the article’s paywall after being issued a correction direction under Singapore’s Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act “demonstrated malice”.<\/p>\n [[nid:736506]]<\/p>\n editor@asiaone.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The defamation suit against Bloomberg was about protecting their personal integrity, reputations, and the standing of their public offices, said Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/69309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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