Singapore ministers awarded close to half a million in damages as Bloomberg loses defamation lawsuit

SINGAPORE: Two Singapore Ministers have been awarded close to half a million combined in damages after the High Court found that Bloomberg and one of its reporters had defamed them in an article published nearly two years ago.

The lawsuit was brought against the American publication and reporter Low De Wei by Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng over an article titled Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy.

Published on December 12 2024, the report examined transactions involving Good Class Bungalows (GCBs) in Singapore and alleged that there was a lack of publicly available records relating to such property deals. It also referred to private properties purchased by Mr Shanmugam and Dr Tan.

In a judgment released on Tuesday (July 14), Justice Audrey Lim ruled that the article was defamatory. She found that the article conveyed a defamatory meaning by suggesting that the ministers had deliberately structured their property dealings in a manner designed to avoid scrutiny.

In her written judgment, Justice Lim 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 judge also concluded that the “natural and ordinary meaning” of the article was that the ministers had “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 had done so in order to conceal the transactions and avoid scrutiny, including possible examination for money laundering.

Describing the allegations as particularly serious, Justice Lim said: “These are grave assertions that directly impugn the claimants’ personal integrity, character and professional reputation. This is therefore a factor that points towards the award of higher damages.”

The court awarded S$230,000 in damages to each minister, bringing the total damages to S$460,000. Both ministers have since said that they plan to donate the amount to charity.

Bloomberg, as the publisher of the article, and Mr Low, as the author, were found to be jointly liable for the defamation, making them jointly responsible for paying the full amount awarded by the court.