A court in Singapore has ordered Bloomberg News and one of its reporters to pay S$460,000 (around $357,000) in damages after an article it published on the city-state’s luxury real estate market was found to have defamed two ministers.
In a judgment released on Tuesday, Singapore’s High Court ordered Bloomberg and reporter Low De Wei to jointly pay S$230,000 to Minister of Manpower Tan See Leng and K. Shanmugam, the coordinating minister for national security and the minister for home affairs. This comprised S$170,000 in general damages and S$60,000 in aggravated damages.
In the judgment, High Court Judge Audrey Lim found the story was written with malice and was conceived to impugn the reputation of both claimants, especially Shanmugam.
The two ministers brought the defamation case over a December 2024 article under Low’s byline that examined the market in “Good Class Bungalows,” or GCBs, ultra-premium residences that are often worth tens of millions of dollars.
Described by one real estate agent as “the most tightly regulated – and among the most coveted – properties in the country,” GCBs generally have plot sizes of at least 1,400 square meters – a kingly size in land-scarce Singapore – and are located in lush residential areas. The price of such properties typically starts at around S$15 million ($11.6 million).
