SINGAPORE: The chief editor of socio-political website The Online Citizen (TOC), Terry Xu, is waging a public campaign to gain sympathy and support from Singaporeans, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng have alleged in a lawsuit against Mr Xu.
Documents obtained by CNA on Friday (Mar 28) show that the ministers filed claims against Mr Xu, whose full name is Xu Yuanchen, on Jan 6 this year and have since been granted permission to serve court papers on him in Taiwan.
The defamation suits relate to a TOC’s article titled “Bloomberg: Nearly half of 2024 GCB transactions lack public record, raising transparency concerns”. The article comments on a Bloomberg article that is also the subject of defamation proceedings by the ministers.
The Bloomberg article, titled “Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy”, was published on Dec 12, 2024, and speaks about Good Class Bungalow (GCB) transactions in Singapore. Both ministers have sued Bloomberg and its reporter, Low De Wei, for libel.
TOC’s article, which referred to and commented on Bloomberg’s article, was also published on Dec 12, 2024, and remains accessible as of Friday morning.
Dr Tan and Mr Shanmugam are represented by the same legal team from Davinder Singh Chambers: Senior Counsel Davinder Singh, Mr David Fong, Ms Sambhavi Rajangam and Mr Adam Lau.
This is not the first time Mr Xu has faced legal action from a minister.
He was previously sued by then-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong over another TOC article about Mr Lee’s dispute with his siblings – Dr Lee Wei Ling and Mr Lee Hsien Yang – over their family home at 38 Oxley Road.
Mr Xu, then still residing in Singapore, lost that defamation suit and was ordered to pay S$210,000 (US$157,000) in damages to Mr Lee in September 2021.
Separately, Mr Xu was sentenced to three weeks’ jail by a district court in April 2022 for defaming Cabinet members. Upon appeal, the sentence was changed to an S$8,000 fine in May 2023.
By then, however, Mr Xu had already served the three-week jail term and had relocated to Taiwan, where he continues to write articles for TOC.
EFFORTS TO REACH XU IN TAIWAN
In addition to filing their claims, the two ministers detailed efforts to reach Mr Xu in Taiwan. These include them submitting affidavits in support of their application for leave to file papers on Mr Xu outside of Singapore.
The ministers submitted a request to have their originating claims, statements of claim and court orders sent through “the proper channel to Taiwan for service” on Mr Xu on Feb 26. The destination specified was an address in Zhongshan District, Taipei.
They also submitted a translation certification stating that the three documents, along with a fourth, had been translated from English into Mandarin by a team of translators, as required under the Rules of Court.
In its latest document – a letter to the Supreme Court dated Mar 11 – the ministers’ lawyers said that Mr Xu had not yet been served papers.
It referred to its request to the Supreme Court on Feb 26, saying that this had been accepted and assigned a case number. However, no further updates had been received as of Mar 11.
In response to CNA’s query on whether the ministers had formally served papers on him in Taiwan, Mr Xu replied “no”, without elaborating further.
