Bloomberg & reporter ordered to pay S$290,000 in legal costs to Shanmugam & Tan See Leng, on top of S$230,000 in damages awarded to each of them

Senior Minister K Shanmugam and Minister for Trade and Industry (Energy and Industry) Tan See Leng have each been awarded S$145,000 in legal costs following their successful defamation suit against Bloomberg and its reporter Low De Wei.

They were previously awarded S$230,000 in damages each after the judge found a Dec. 12 2024 article on Good Class Bungalow (GCB) transactions written by Low for Bloomberg had defamed the ministers.

According to an extract of the notes of the Jul. 30 proceedings, which was shared with the media, each minister was awarded S$50,000 in pre-trial costs, S$65,000 in trial costs and S$30,000 in post-trial costs.

The pre-trial and post-trial costs were awarded for work relating to the preparation of written submissions and a half-day hearing held on May 22.

The trial costs were assessed at S$10,000 per day for the 6.5-day trial.

Defamation suit

The Singaporean ministers sued the news outlet and the reporter over an article it ran on Dec. 12, 2024, titled, "Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy".

The article discussed the sale of GCBs in Singapore and claimed there was a lack of public records regarding GCB transactions.

It mentioned private properties purchased by Shanmugam and Tan.

Article found to have defamed ministers

In a judgment released on Jul. 14, Judge Audrey Lim found that the article had indeed defamed the ministers.

She ruled that it linked the duo's property transactions to secrecy, opacity and money laundering, creating a defamatory impression.

“An allegation that a person has deliberately structured his property dealings to escape examination for possible money laundering plainly tends to lower him in the estimation of right-thinking members of society,” she wrote.

Lim also found that the "natural and ordinary meaning" of the article is that the claimants "took advantage of the absence of checks and balances or disclosure requirements to conduct their property transactions in a non-transparent manner" and that they did so to "hide their transactions and avoid scrutiny that might extend to the possibility of money laundering".

"These are grave assertions that directly impugn the claimants’ personal integrity, character and professional reputation. This is therefore a factor that points towards the award of higher damages," Lim said.

Bloomberg, as the publisher, and Low, as the author, were found to be jointly and severally liable for the defamation, meaning they are jointly responsible for paying the full amount owed.

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