Singapore Court Orders Bloomberg to Pay Ministers S$460,000 After Finding Defamation in Property Deals Article

A Singapore court ordered Bloomberg and reporter Low De Wei to pay S$460,000 to ministers K Shanmugam and Tan See Leng in a defamation case. The ministers sued last year over a 2024 article that referenced their property transactions. The article, titled "Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy," examined how some wealthy buyers in Singapore used shell companies to obscure purchases of Good Class Bungalows.

It reported that Shanmugam sold a bungalow for S$88m to an unnamed buyer using a trust and that Tan bought a Good Class Bungalow for around S$27m through a non-caveated deal. High Court judge Audrey Lim ruled that the article's natural and ordinary meaning was that the ministers "took advantage" of regulations to deal properties in a "non-transparent manner" to avoid scrutiny that might extend to money laundering.

" The article was taken down from Bloomberg's website after the verdict on Tuesday.

Singaporean authorities ordered Bloomberg to put up a "correction notice" on the article under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act. Bloomberg complied but added a note stating it was required to publish the government's note "under threat of sanction" while standing by its reporting.

POFMA correction notices were issued to other news outlets that reshared the Bloomberg story or published commentaries on it.

Shanmugam and Tan also successfully filed a defamation suit against the editor-in-chief of The Online Citizen over a commentary on the Bloomberg piece. In 2009, the Far Eastern Economic Review was ordered to pay more than S$400,000 after a court ruled one of its articles defamed then prime minister Lee Hsien Loong and Lee Kuan Yew.

The Economist and the New York Times have been ordered to pay damages in defamation suits in Singapore.