Lee Hsien Yang: Neither Ho Ching nor PMO had the right to remove 38 Oxley Road items

New development: Neither Ho Ching nor PM Lee are beneficiaries of LKY's 'residual items'.

Jeanette Tan | June 24, 2017, 02:43 PM

Blah blah blah you know what's going on.

On Saturday, we bring you this new development in the ongoing Lee saga: as it turns out, according to Lee Hsien Yang, neither Ho Ching or her husband and his older brother Lee Hsien Loong had any legal right to remove any items belonging to the late Lee Kuan Yew from his 38 Oxley Road house.

On Thursday night, there was a bit of confusion caused by an administrative error on the part of the National Heritage Board, which wrongly recorded that it received four documents from Ho Ching, ostensibly on behalf of the Prime Minister's Office, on loan on February 6, 2015 — this was a day after the late Lee was warded in the intensive care unit, in critical condition.

Now, as some realised soon after, this can't have been right as Ho was travelling at the time, with her husband. So the NHB corrected this in a clarification statement later that evening, saying it actually received the items from Ho on April 6 that year, not two months prior.

These were the items, to refresh your memory:

Screenshot from Lee Hsien Yang's Facebook post

In other words, Ho passed on the items to the NHB only after LKY passed away. But this, maintains Hsien Yang, does not make the situation any more acceptable.

He asked how Ho can act on behalf of PMO without having any official position in it, and also made the following points:

1) Hsien Yang and Wei Ling, as executors of LKY's will and also as representatives of LKY's estate, do not object to lending items to the NHB.

In fact, he points out, they gifted a whole bunch of stuff to the National Museum for the ongoing exhibition (remember the whole thing about the Deed of Gift?) We Built A Nation.

2) LKY's estate's residual items come under the purview of his estate representatives (i.e. Hsien Yang and Wei Ling), and so nobody else has any business leafing through them or lending them to anyone.

Neither the beneficiaries named in LKY's will nor any state organ (in this instance, PMO) is entitled to any of these items, he declares. Now, there is some uncertainty as to what "residual items" refers specifically to, but he does add this:

"The executors of LKY's estate never authorized Ho Ching to remove the items she admits to removing. Informing the executors after the fact does not give her the right to intermeddle."

You can read Hsien Yang's full Facebook post here:

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Top photo via Rolls-Royce's website and via Lucasmatti on Wikimedia Commons.

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