Singapore Cabinet ministers each awarded $230k in damages in defamation suit

The High Court on July 14 awarded Cabinet ministers K. Shanmugam and Tan See Leng each $230,000 in damages after ruling in their favour in the defamation suit they brought against news provider Bloomberg and its journalist.

The case arose from a Bloomberg article published on Dec 12, 2024, titled “Singapore mansion deals are increasingly shrouded in secrecy”, which mentioned transactions involving Good Class Bungalows (GCBs) in Singapore.

The article included the ministers’ property deals in 2023 – the sale of Mr Shanmugam’s former home in the Queen Astrid Park area to UBS Trustees for $88 million and Dr Tan’s non-caveated purchase of a bungalow in Brizay Park for nearly $27.3 million.

In a written judgment on July 14, Justice Audrey Lim found the natural and ordinary meaning of the article is that the ministers took advantage of the absence of checks and balances or disclosure requirements to conduct their property transactions in a non-transparent manner, and that they did so in order to hide their transactions and avoid scrutiny that might extend to the possibility of money laundering.

The article is thus defamatory of both claimants, she said.

“An allegation that a person has deliberately structured his property dealings to escape examination for possible money laundering plainly tends to lower him in the estimation of right-thinking members of society.”

-The Strait Times