A Singapore high court has ordered Bloomberg News and one of its reporters, Low De Wei, to pay a total of S$460,000, equivalent to approximately US$355,734, in damages after a published article was ruled to have defamed two government ministers. According to the judgment released on Tuesday, each minister is to receive S$230,000, a sum that includes S$170,000 in general damages and S$60,000 in aggravated damages.
Justice Audrey Lim, who presided over the case, stated that the article's primary objective was to report on the ministers, specifically regarding their transactions involving good class bungalows. The judge noted that the broader narrative used in the piece—which suggested that wealthy individuals in Singapore utilize trust structures and non-caveated transactions to maintain secrecy—served as a cover for the specific story about the claimants. Furthermore, the court found that the reporter, Low, had been reckless and provided false information concerning the opacity of government records for these transactions. The ruling highlighted that such records are actually public and searchable via the Singapore Land Authority’s integrated land information service, a fact the court noted the reporter was aware of from his own research.
John Micklethwait, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg, expressed disappointment with the court's decision, affirming that the company continues to stand by both the reporter and the original story. In an email to Reuters, Micklethwait stated that the organization argued at trial that the reporting was accurate and served an important public interest. He further asserted that the ministers had applied an extremely strained interpretation to a report he characterized as a solid piece of journalism. Bloomberg has not yet indicated whether it intends to appeal the decision. Legal representatives for the ministers did not provide an immediate response to requests for comment following the ruling.
