Bloomberg loses defamation case, ordered to pay $356,000 to Singapore ministers

The Singapore High Court has reportedly ordered Bloomberg to pay $356,000 to the ministers in a defamation case. While the case stemmed from a lawsuit filed against them for defamation over an article, citing their property transactions.

Bloomberg clarified it had not made accusations directly but had instead used them as key examples of a broader trend amid the ongoing controversy.

The piece titled “Singapore Mansion Deals are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy” looked at the certain ways in which some wealthy buyers in Singapore cloak their purchases of Good Class Bungalows-a category of multimillion-dollar mansions in Singapore.

The reports further indicated that Shanmugam, the Coordinating Minister for National Security has sold a bungalow for $88million to an anonymous purchaser.

Why did the ministers sue? -Key reasons explained

The ministers and their lawyers brought up the point that the mention of the ministers in the article falsely linked their property deals with those covered in the rest of the article, which included mounting concerns over transparency and money laundering.

Bloomberg and Low maintained that the story did not imply any misconduct by the ministers but instead listed them as notable illustrations of bungalow deals. According to Bloomberg’s lawyers, the ministers had put forward the most damaging interpretation, rather than the one an ordinary reader would make according to Bloomberg’s lawyers.

Moreover, the article was the result of an in-depth investigation, and the reporter had requested statements from the ministers several times.

Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act, Singaporean authorities ordered Bloomberg to publish a “correction notice” on the article.

It was launched by the government in 2019 to actively address misinformation, the anti-fake news law allows enforcement directives to be tagged onto online content deemed false by authorities.

As reported by the BBC, Shanmugam and Tan also won a defamation suit against the editor-in-chief of a local independent outlet. Singapore’s leaders have long had a reputation for being inclined towards lawsuits against critics and foreign news outlets for defamation.

It is crucial to note that such actions are intended to protect their reputations though nitizens say they are in fact a repression of political opposition. Furthermore, the Economist and the New York Times are among the other foreign outlets that have previously been ordered to pay damages in defamation suits.