Two Singapore ministers won a defamation case against Bloomberg LP over the contents of a December 2024 news article about the island nation’s property market.
Coordinating Minister for National Security K Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng had argued the piece implied they hid the details of two separate property transactions to avoid scrutiny for money laundering. They also said Bloomberg did this maliciously.
Bloomberg countered that the article, entitled Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy, did not mean what the ministers alleged, and that it was a fair and balanced story.
High Court judge Audrey Lim agreed with the ministers.
Lim said in her judgment handed down Tuesday that the article was defamatory. She also found the story was written with malice and was conceived to impugn the reputation of both claimants, especially Shanmugam.
“We are very disappointed by this ruling but we will of course respect it,” John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg, said. “We argued at trial that our reporting was accurate and served an important public interest, and we continue to believe that the ministers have imposed an extremely strained meaning on what was a solid story.
“Our newsroom — and our reporter — conducted themselves with integrity, and met all our editorial standards in preparing the story at the center of this trial. We continue to stand by them,” Micklethwait added.
Shanmugam and Tan were awarded S$230,000 (US$178,000 or RM725,884) each in damages and Bloomberg was ordered to remove the story from publication. Bloomberg LP is the parent company of Bloomberg News.
