SINGAPORE: Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said on Wednesday (Apr 8) that Bloomberg staff members had misled his press secretary about the purpose of an article he alleges is defamatory, and were also not fully truthful to their own management about its nature.

Under cross-examination by Bloomberg's lawyer, Senior Counsel Sreenivasan Narayanan, Mr Shanmugam was pressed to specify how reporters from the United States-based news organisation had lied to him when seeking comment. The defence also pointed to early versions of the article that did not mention the minister.

Towards the end of the hearing, the minister said the fact that the article was not taken down after it received a government fake news directive revealed Bloomberg's intentions and malicious behaviour towards him, and should be grounds for aggravated damages. 

The exchanges took place on the second day of the defamation trial brought by Mr Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng against Bloomberg and its reporter Low De Wei.

Both ministers were mentioned in a December 2024 Bloomberg article about Good Class Bungalow (GCB) transactions titled "Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy", written by Mr Low.

The article had referred to Mr Shanmugam's S$88 million (US$69 million) sale of his GCB in the Queen Astrid Park area and Dr Tan's purchase of a Brizay Park GCB for nearly S$27.3 million.

The ministers allege that the article defamed them by suggesting they had taken advantage of the lack of checks and balances and disclosure requirements in carrying out property transactions in a "non-transparent manner".

Bloomberg, in its defence, said the genesis of Mr Low's article was a report on real estate matters and that it did not originate from any intention to report on the ministers or their transactions.

WHAT THE LIE WAS

Mr Shanmugam had testified on Tuesday that he had seen documents confirming to him that Bloomberg was lying to his press secretary, Ms Ng Siew Hua. 

On Wednesday, Mr Sreenivasan opened the hearing by asking the minister to lay out what these lies were.

To this, Mr Shanmugam said that Bloomberg's news employees in Singapore who were t...