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Bloomberg Ordered to Pay $357,000 in Damages After Losing Singapore Defamation Case

The High Court ruled that a 2024 article on the city-state’s luxury real estate market maliciously defamed ministers Tan See Leng and K. Shanmugam.

A court in Singapore has ordered Bloomberg News and one of its reporters to pay S$460,000 (around $357,000) in damages after an article it published on the city-state’s luxury real estate market was found to have defamed two ministers.

In a judgment released on Tuesday, Singapore’s High Court ordered Bloomberg and reporter Low De Wei to jointly pay S$230,000 to Minister of Manpower Tan See Leng and K. Shanmugam, the coordinating minister for national security and the minister for home affairs. This comprised S$170,000 in general damages and S$60,000 in aggravated damages.

In the judgment, High Court Judge Audrey Lim found the story was written with malice and was conceived to impugn the reputation of both claimants, especially Shanmugam.

The two ministers brought the defamation case over a December 2024 article under Low’s byline that examined the market in “Good Class Bungalows,” or GCBs, ultra-premium residences that are often worth tens of millions of dollars.

Described by one real estate agent as “the most tightly regulated – and among the most coveted – properties in the country,” GCBs generally have plot sizes of at least 1,400 square meters – a kingly size in land-scarce Singapore – and are located in lush residential areas. The price of such properties typically starts at around S$15 million ($11.6 million).

The article alleged that “Singapore’s ultra-rich are increasingly cloaking their purchases of mansions in the city-state in secrecy, to avoid drawing attention to their wealth and social status.” It said that “close to half” of GCB purchases, as measured by value, failed to include legal filings known as property caveats, which make the transactions widely known. It added that “more individuals” were acquiring these properties “using shell companies or trusts that help keep their identities private.”

While the article focused mostly on GCB transactions involving recently naturalized Chinese citizens, it also mentioned two property deals involving the two ministers: the sale of Shanmugam’s former home to UBS Trustees for S$88 million ($68.2 million) and Tan’s non-caveated purchase of a GCB for $27.3 million ($21.2 million), both of which took place in 2023.

According to The New York Times, which covered the trial, neither minister disputed the accuracy of the reporting on these transactions. However, they argued that the framing of the article – in particular, the use of words like........

© The Diplomat