Bloomberg, reporter ordered to pay Shanmugam, Tan See Leng S$230,000 each in damages over defamatory article

SINGAPORE: A court has awarded Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng damages of S$230,000 (US$177,874) each for defamation by news organisation Bloomberg and its reporter, Mr Low De Wei.

In a judgment released on Tuesday (Jul 14), Justice Audrey Lim found that the December 2024 article about Good Class Bungalow (GCB) transactions had defamed the ministers.

She rejected Bloomberg's argument that the article merely examined a broader trend of non-caveated GCB transactions and that the ministers were cited only as examples.

Instead, she said the article, when read as a whole, linked the ministers' transactions with claims about secrecy, opacity and money laundering, creating a defamatory impression.

Justice Lim also rejected Bloomberg's reliance on a public interest defence known as the Reynolds defence in UK law, saying it is not part of Singapore law.

Even if it were available, the judge found that Bloomberg would not have satisfied the standard of responsible journalism and that the ministers were not given a fair opportunity to respond to the allegations ultimately published.

Justice Lim said internal correspondence from Bloomberg demonstrates that the dominant purpose behind the article was to publish a story about the ministers, in particular about their GCB transactions.

"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 devised to carry that story," said Justice Lim.

THE ARTICLE

The Bloomberg article opened with a line that "Singapore's ultra-rich are increasingly cloaking their purchases of mansions in the city-state in secrecy".

After mentioning a S$3 billion money laundering scandal and how criminals linked to this case were convicted, jailed and deported, the article said buyers of high-end homes would rather keep their purchases under the radar.

The article then named Dr Tan and Mr Shanmugam and their respective GCB transactions.

Bloomberg and Mr Low had contested the claims, saying the article was about broader trends in Singapore's GCB market rather than about the ministers personally, or any wrongdoing on their part.

In a 71-page judgment, Justice Lim said the test for determining the natural and ordinary meaning of offending words in a defamation action is well-settled.

The court decides what meaning the words would convey to an ordinary reasonable person or reader using their general knowledge and common sense. It is irrelevant what meaning was intended by the maker or understood by the claimant.

The ministers' case was that the article had defamed them in two ways. First, it made it seem that the ministers had taken advantage of the absence of checks and balances or disclosure requirements to conduct their property transactions in a non-transparent manner.

Second, they sought to hide their transactions and avoid scrutiny, including scrutiny that might extend to the possibility of money laundering.

Justice Lim found that the first element was made out, as an ordinary reader would understand the article to mean that Singapore’s current system for non-caveated GCB or mansion transactions lacked checks, balances or disclosure requirements, allowing such transactions to be kept secret or non-transparent.

She pointed to the article's headline, "Singapore Mansion Deals are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy", as well as the first bullet point under the headline stating "More people buy homes with trusts, hiding owners' identities" and the article's opening line "Singapore's ultra-rich are increasingly cloaking their purchases of mansions in secrecy".

She listed several other paragraphs from the article in the same vein.

Justice Lim said the headline, bullet point and first paragraph immediately conveyed to a reader that GCB deals are being kept secret or hidden to avoid drawing attention to the purchaser's wealth, social status and identity.

She also found that the article conveys to the reader that a buyer would pay a premium to a seller for a deal to be kept "quiet" or "off-radar".

The editorial placement of Dr Tan's transaction under the heading "Non-Caveated Deals", read in context, would lead a reader to draw the inference that his purchase was conducted without the usual transparency that a caveat affords, and that he had taken advantage of the capacity that the absence of a caveat permits, said Justice Lim.

She found that readers would understand Mr Shanmugam’s transaction as an example of the trust mechanism described in the article as a way to maintain privacy from scrutiny.

Justice Lim disagreed with Bloomberg's position that the article was concerned with trends and contained nothing defamatory.

She said the defamatory character of the second element claimed by the ministers lies not in any explicit accusation but in the inference it invites - that the ministers sought to hide their transactions and avoid scrutiny that might extend to money laundering.

She found that the second element was also made out, and that the article defamed both ministers.

Since all people who procure or participate in publishing libel, including the journalist, editor and publisher, are jointly and severally liable for the whole of the claimant's damage, she found the publisher in this case and the author of the article jointly and severally liable for the damage suffered by the ministers as a result of the defamatory article.

This means Bloomberg and Mr Low are collectively responsible for paying the total amount of damages and it is possible for the claimants to pursue either one of them for the full amount of S$460,000.

THE REYNOLDS PRIVILEGE

Bloomberg and Mr Low argued that, if the article was found to be defamatory, they were entitled to rely on the Reynolds privilege — a defence developed in English defamation law — because they had exercised their duty to communicate important information to the general public.

Justice Lim rejected that argument. She said the Court of Appeal had previously held that the Reynolds privilege is not part of Singapore law.

Instead, it was a development brought about by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Human Rights Act (UK), neither of which applies in Singapore.

The Court of Appeal further stated that if the Reynolds privilege were to be adopted as part of Singapore's common law, it would have to be adopted on the basis that the freedom of speech in the Constitution of Singapore is likewise "a right based on a constitutional or higher legal order foundation".

Additionally, constitutional free speech in Singapore is limited to Singapore citizens only.

In light of this, Justice Lim said Bloomberg's reliance on the Reynolds privilege was a non-starter.

She added that even if the defence were available, Bloomberg and Mr Low would likely not have satisfied the "responsible journalism" test.

She said the article made very serious allegations of impropriety and links to money laundering, and there was no urgency to publish the article.

The ministers' transactions were not new in a way that they would become perishable or dated if not quickly published. They occurred in 2023, a year before the article was published in December 2024.

Although Bloomberg contacted the ministers' press secretaries, what was conveyed differed materially from what was published, said Justice Lim.

"In essence, I find the claimants were not given an adequate opportunity to comment," she said. "Simple fairness dictates that a person who intends to publish a (defamatory) story about another should give that person a fair opportunity to put his side of the story."

Justice Lim said the timing of the publication also appeared to weigh against the defendants, as the article was published in the period before Singapore's 2025 General Election.

Mr Low had conceded that he knew at the time that elections were coming and had to be held by 2025. He also conceded that it was Bloomberg and he who decided to characterise Mr Shanmugam's transaction as "political fodder" in the article, and that this characterisation was an editorial decision.

"Being an editorial judgment made by the defendants, this characterisation cannot thus be attributed to an external source," said Justice Lim.

"A responsible journalist who makes his own decision to present a named government minister's transaction as politically charged material, in the knowledge that elections are imminent, assumes a correspondingly heightened responsibility to ensure that the presentation is fair, accurate and not misleading. I do not find the defendants would have discharged this obligation."

FALSEHOODS IN THE ARTICLE

Justice Lim also said there were "material falsehoods" in the article.

For example, the article conveyed that even the government was unaware of non-caveated transactions, but Mr Low accepted that a member of the public could obtain details of a non-caveated one through the Singapore Land Authority's (SLA's) Integrated Land Information Service by entering the address.

If the details are held by SLA, the government is thus aware of such transactions, said the judge.

She said Mr Low was at the very least "reckless" as to the veracity of the claim conveyed in the article that the government is unaware of non-caveated transactions.

The article also conveyed other falsehoods, such as the claim that buyers typically pay premiums for off-radar transactions in Singapore.

Justice Lim said there is no evidence that non-caveated deals command a premium, and Mr Low knew that what he conveyed was untrue. He had asked List Sotheby's International Realty in September 2024 whether there was a difference between non-caveated and caveated transactions in terms of pricing, to which Sotheby's replied "No".

Justice Lim said Bloomberg's internal correspondence reveals the defendants' dominant motive in publishing the article was to target the claimants, particularly Mr Shanmugam.

An email from a Ms Joyce Koh to Mr Low in March 2024 said she had heard from a source that "our favourite minister Shan recently sold his GCB at Queen Astrid, probably for an eye-watering sum".

Mr Low replied that he had already seen the property record and added that "in the spirit of minister GCB transactions, manpower minister tan see leng also bought a GCB last year in bukit timah".

The focus was on the ministers as individuals, said the judge.

The exchange that followed within Bloomberg shows that those involved appreciated the sensitivity of what they proposed to publish, she added.

Justice Lim said the correspondence demonstrates that the dominant purpose behind the article was to publish a story about the ministers, in particular about their GCB transactions.

"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 devised to carry that story," said Justice Lim.

She found that Bloomberg's conduct in removing the paywall on the article demonstrated malice. It had initially been hidden behind a paywall so that only subscribers could read it.

After Bloomberg was issued a correction direction under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), the paywall was removed.

Justice Lim rejected Bloomberg's explanation that the paywall was removed to comply with the correction direction and said it was instead done to make the article accessible to the broader public.

Of the S$230,000 damages she ordered to be paid to each minister, S$170,000 are general damages and S$60,000 special damages.

The Bloomberg article was also cited in a December 2024 article by The Online Citizen. In March, its chief editor, Terry Xu, was ordered to pay the two ministers S$420,000 in damages for defamation over the article.

A check of Bloomberg’s original article on Tuesday showed that the outlet had retracted the story as of 5.44pm.

It wrote: “Bloomberg News retracted a story about property transactions in Singapore originally published on Dec 12, 2024 to comply with an order from the country’s High Court.”

In response to CNA's query, Bloomberg's editor-in-chief John Micklethwait said the company was "very disappointed" by the ruling but "will of course respect it". 

“Our newsroom - and our reporter - conducted themselves with integrity, and met all our editorial standards in preparing the story at the centre of this trial. We continue to stand by them,” he added.

CNA has contacted the ministers for comment.