Days after the article was published, in December 2024, ministers announced they would take legal action.

During the trial in April, the minister and his lawyers argued that the article’s mention of ministers unfairly associated their real estate businesses with treaties in the rest of the article, which included concerns about transparency and money laundering.

Shanmugam also argued that the Bloomberg article was written to target him and publish news about the sale of his property.

Bloomberg and Low argued that the story did not imply any misconduct on the part of the ministers, but instead listed them as “newsworthy examples” of bungalow deals.

Ministers had given the article the “most defamatory” reading, unlike what an ordinary reader would do, Bloomberg’s lawyers said.

They added that the article had gone through extensive research and verification, and their reporter had sought comment from ministers several times.

In her verdict, High Court Judge Audrey Lim said the “natural and ordinary meaning” of the article is that the ministers “took advantage” of existing regulations to deal in their properties in a “non-transparent manner”, and that they did so “to avoid scrutiny that could extend to the possibility of money laundering”.

“These are serious allegations that directly impugn the personal integrity, character and professional reputation of the plaintiffs,” Lim said, adding that this was a factor in the award of damages.

Aside from the defamation case, Singapore authorities ordered Bloomberg to publish a “correction notice” on the article, under its Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA).

Introduced by the government in 2019 to combat disinformation, the anti-fake news law requires correction notices to be labeled on online content deemed false by authorities, although some argue it is often invoked to attack criticism of the government.

Bloomberg complied with POFMA’s order but added a note to say that while it was required to publish the government note “under threat of sanction,” it stood by its information.

POFMA correction notices were also sent to media outlets that had shared the Bloomberg story or published comments on it.

Shanmugam and Tan also successfully filed a defamation suit against the editor-in-chief of local independent outlet The Online Citizen, for a comment he had published on the Bloomberg article.

Singapore’s leaders have long managed to sue their critics and foreign media outlets for defamation. They maintain that such actions are aimed at protecting their reputation, although critics say they actually suppress political dissent.

In 2009, Far Eastern Economic Review, a now-defunct Asian business magazine, was forced to pay more than S$400,000 after a court ruled that one of its articles had defamed then-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father, also Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew.

The Economist and the New York Times are among other foreign media outlets that have been ordered to pay damages in defamation lawsuits.