Singapore's High Court has ordered Bloomberg News and its reporter to pay S$460,000 (about US$355,734) in damages to two government ministers over an article found to be defamatory. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
According to the judgment, Bloomberg and reporter Low De Wei are jointly liable to pay S$230,000 to each minister, comprising S$170,000 in general damages and S$60,000 in aggravated damages.
Bloomberg's editor-in-chief, John Micklethwait, said he was disappointed by the ruling and that the company continued to stand by its reporter and the newsroom. "We argued at trial that our reporting was accurate and served an important public interest, and we continue to believe that the ministers have imposed an extremely strained meaning on what was a solid story," he told Reuters in an email. He did not say whether Bloomberg planned an appeal.
Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng sued Bloomberg and its reporter for defamation over a December 2024 article about secrecy surrounding expensive property transactions involving "good class bungalows" – a prized kind of property in Singapore – that mentioned deals involving the ministers.
The lawyer for the ministers called for aggravated damages to be awarded and said the defendants had shown malice. He said in court that when Bloomberg received a correction direction issued under Singapore's Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act, the company responded by lifting the paywall on the article and publicly stood by it.
A Bloomberg editor said in an affidavit that the company had lifted the paywall so that readers could see the correction notice. The hearing was told that the notice was placed at the top of the story on its website, along with a statement that Bloomberg "respectfully disagrees" with the direction and stood by its reporting.
In her ruling, Judge Audrey Lim said Low had been reckless and false in describing the opacity of local government records for non-caveated bungalow transactions. She said that such records were maintained in public records and made searchable through the Singapore Land Authority's integrated land information service, a fact Low knew from making searches as a reporter. "I find that Bloomberg's conduct in removing the paywall pertaining to the article also demonstrates malice," the judge said.