S’pore ex-PM’s brother pays damages to Indian-origin ministers in defamation case

The younger brother of Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Hsien Loong paid more than SGD 600,000 (USD 466,000) in damages to two Indian-origin ministers for making defamatory allegations against them on a social media site.

Lee Hsien Yang made the payment to Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan after the city-state’s High Court in May ordered him to pay SGD 200,000 each to them. On top of the damages, he was required to pay costs of SGD 51,000 to each minister.

The defamation case stems from Yang’s allegations relating to Shanmugam and Balakrishnan renting two state-owned bungalows at Ridout Road in the posh conclave of the city-state.

In a Facebook post on Sunday, Yang, the younger son of Singapore’s first Prime Minister, the late Lee Kuan Yew, said he paid the ministers a total of SGD 619,335.

“I have paid Ministers Shanmugam and Vivian Balakrishnan a total of SGD 619,335.53 This amount is equivalent to 13.6 months rental for the two Ridout houses,” he said in a post on Facebook.

In response, the ministers reiterated they would donate the damages to charity, Channel News Asia reported on Tuesday.

Yang made the defamatory comments in a Facebook post in July 2023, suggesting that Shanmugam and Balakrishnan had acted corruptly by having the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) give them preferential treatment in the rental of the colonial-built black-and-white bungalows at Ridout Road.

Justice Goh Yihan said in his judgment that Yang had “acted with malice” in posting the offending words, justifying not only higher damages but also aggravated damages.

He added Yang’s post came after the anti-graft agency found the ministers did not receive any preferential treatment over the Ridout Road properties.