Singapore court orders Bloomberg to pay $356,000 to ministers in defamation case

Here is the latest breaking news from around the world: Singapore court orders Bloomberg to pay $356,000 to ministers in defamation caseImage source, Getty ImagesByKoh EwePublished14 July 2026, 10:14 BSTUpdated 3 hours agoA Singapore court has ordered Bloomberg and one of its reporters to pay S$460,000 ($356,000; £266,000) to two ministers who had sued them for defamation over an article referencing their property transactions. Last year, the ministers, K Shanmugam and Tan See Leng, sued Bloomberg and reporter Low De Wei for a 2024 article which had mentioned their property deals. Bloomberg said it did not imply any wrongdoing and had used them as examples of a broader trend.

The judge found that when read as a whole, the piece implied wrongdoing by the ministers as it also mentioned secrecy and money laundering. In a statement published by Bloomberg News, the outlet's editor-in-chief John Micklethwait said it was "very disappointed by this ruling but we will of course respect it". "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 said.

The Details

What did the article say? The piece titled "Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy" looked at the ways in which some wealthy buyers in Singapore obscured their purchases of Good Class Bungalows - a category of multimillion-dollar mansions in Singapore - such as by using shell companies which hide their identities. It reported that Shanmugam, the Coordinating Minister for National Security and former law minister, had sold a bungalow for S$88m ($68m; £51m) to an unnamed buyer using a trust.

The piece also noted that Tan, the Minister for Manpower, had bought a Good Class Bungalow for around S$27m - citing him as one example among a list of other public figures who had bought luxury estates through an arrangement known as a non-caveated deal, that makes it harder to track who is involved in the transaction. The article was taken down from Bloomberg's website after the verdict on Tuesday, as ordered by the court. Why did the ministers sue?

Days after the article was published in December 2024, the ministers announced that they would take legal action. During the trial in April, the minister and their lawyers argued that the mention of the ministers in the article unfairly associated their property deals with those covered 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 wrongdoing by the ministers, but rather listed them as "newsworthy examples" of bungalow deals. The ministers had given the piece the "most defamatory" reading, as opposed to what an ordinary reader would do, Bloomberg's lawyers said.

The development has drawn wide international attention, with diplomatic circles watching closely.