Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng have each been awarded S$230,000 after the High Court ruled that a Bloomberg report about Good Class Bungalow (GCB) transactions had defamed them.
In a judgment issued on Tuesday (14 July), Justice Audrey Lim found that the December 2024 report implied that the ministers had deliberately kept their respective property deals out of public view to avoid scrutiny, including over possible money laundering.
Source: Bloomberg
She ruled that this implication was defamatory and would damage their standing in the eyes of the public.
The article, titled “Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy”, was written by reporter Low De Wei and published on 12 Dec 2024.
Source: Bloomberg
The webpage has since been updated with a notice stating that Bloomberg News retracted the article to comply with an order from Singapore’s High Court.
Bloomberg and Mr Low argued that the report examined a wider trend involving non-caveated GCB transactions, with the ministers’ deals used only as examples.
However, Justice Lim found that the way the article was presented associated their transactions with secrecy, inadequate disclosure, and money laundering concerns.
The judge also rejected the defendants’ reliance on the Reynolds defence, which protects certain public-interest reporting under English defamation law, as it has not been adopted in Singapore.
She added that even if the defence were available, Bloomberg and Mr Low would not have met the standard of responsible journalism because the ministers were not given a fair opportunity to address the allegations eventually published.
Source: K Shanmugam Sc on Facebook
Justice Lim awarded each minister S$170,000 in general damages and S$60,000 in special damages, bringing their individual awards to S$230,000.
Bloomberg and Mr Low were held jointly and severally liable for the total S$460,000. This means they share responsibility for the full sum, which may be recovered from either defendant.
The article referred to two transactions from 2023.
Mr Shanmugam sold his former home in the Queen Astrid Park area to UBS Trustees for S$88 million, while Dr Tan bought a bungalow in Brizay Park for nearly S$27.3 million without lodging a caveat.
Source: Tan See Leng on Facebook
Justice Lim found that the article suggested the ministers had used shortcomings in disclosure and oversight to keep their transactions hidden.
She said an allegation that someone had arranged a property deal to avoid scrutiny over possible money laundering would clearly harm that person’s reputation.
Furthermore, Justice Lim found that Bloomberg’s internal correspondence showed the ministers’ transactions were central to the development of the article, rather than passing examples in a broader report on the luxury property market.
She also identified unsupported claims concerning non-caveated deals.
Information about such transactions remained accessible through the Singapore Land Authority, while there was no evidence that buyers generally paid a premium to keep them out of public view.
The judgment follows a separate case in March, when The Online Citizen chief editor Terry Xu was ordered to pay Mr Shanmugam and Dr Tan S$210,000 each over an article that repeated related allegations.
Also read: Bloomberg issued POFMA order over S’pore GCB transactions article, Govt addresses ‘falsehoods’
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Featured image adapted from K Shanmugam Sc on Facebook and Tan See Leng on Facebook.