SINGAPORE: Mr Lee Hsien Yang has paid ministers K Shanmugam and Vivian Balakrishnan more than S$600,000 (US$466,000) for defaming them over their rental of state properties at Ridout Road.
The payment comes after a High Court decision in May, ordering Mr Lee to pay S$200,000 each to the two ministers. On top of the damages, he was required to pay costs of S$51,000 to each minister.
Mr Lee, the brother of former prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, made the defamatory comments in a Facebook post in July 2023, suggesting that Mr Shanmugam and Dr Balakrishnan had acted corruptly by having the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) give them preferential treatment in the rental of the black-and-white bungalows at Ridout Road.
Justice Goh Yihan said in his judgment that Mr Lee had “acted with malice” in posting the offending words, justifying not only higher damages but aggravated damages.
In a Facebook post on Sunday (Sep 29), Mr Lee said he paid the ministers a total of S$619,335.
“My significant asset in Singapore is 38 Oxley Road,” Mr Lee said, referring to the house of his late father, Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew.
“In order to try to honour my father’s wishes in connection with his home and to allow Wei Ling, who is ill to continue to stay at 38 Oxley Road, I have made this payment to the ministers,” he added, naming his sister.
“NOTHING TO DO WITH 38 OXLEY ROAD”: MINISTERS
Both ministers responded to Mr Lee’s remarks with similar Facebook posts on Tuesday.
Mr Lee’s Sep 29 post “shows that he will say anything without regard to the facts”, said Dr Balakrishnan, who is the foreign affairs minister.
He and Mr Shanmugam, the law and home affairs minister, described Mr Lee’s comments on his payment and the Oxley Road property as “extraordinary”.
“Mr Lee Hsien Yang knows that the defamation cases have nothing to do with Mr Lee Kuan Yew,” both ministers said.
“They also have nothing to do with 38 Oxley Road … We did not once say that we intended to enforce our judgments on 38 Oxley Road,” they added.
“What he has conveniently omitted to mention is that he owns at least one other asset in Singapore (based on publicly available information), whose value would have been more than sufficient to satisfy his debt. If he did not pay on the judgment, that asset could have been subject to enforcement.”
