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High Court awards S$133,000 in damages to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong over Facebook share by veteran blogger

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The High Court on Wednesday (24 Mar) awarded S$133,000 in damages to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his libel suit against veteran blogger Leong Sze Hian.

The defamation suit concerns an article by shared by Mr Leong on his personal Facebook Timeline titled “Breaking News: Singapore Lee Hsien Loong Becomes 1MDB’s Key Investigation Target – Najib Signed Several Unfair Agreements with Hsien Loong In Exchange For Money Laundering”.

The article, published by “Malaysian-based social news network” The Coverage, alleged that PM Lee had entered “several unfair agreements” with Najib Razak, who was the Malaysian Prime Minister at the time the deals purportedly took place, “including the agreement to build the Singapore-Malaysia High-Speed Rail”, according to court documents.

It is noted in Mr Leong’s submissions that he did not include any accompanying text alongside the article at the time he shared the article on 7 November 2018.

PM Lee’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh last Nov had asked the court for S$150,000 in damages, stating that the allegations made in the offending article are “far more serious” than what was made in blogger Roy Ngerng’s case.

“While I have to show substantial publication and republication within Singapore, it is relevant that Singaporeans are being told that their prime minister of a government which prides itself on being clean is actually part of a conspiracy in relation to a global scam,” said Mr Singh.

Mr Leong’s lawyer Lim Tean, however, had argued before Justice Aedit Abdullah that if the court was to find Mr Leong liable of defamation and must award damages to PM Lee, the court should then award “derisory” damages.

“I would not go so far as to ask you to award the smallest coin in the realm which is 5 cents, but a dollar is not out of the question,” said Mr Lim.

Dr Phan Tuan Quang, an associate professor of Innovation and Information Management at the University of Hong Kong, on 7 Oct last year testified via Zoom — as PM Lee’s expert witness — that while he did not have the raw data from Mr Leong’s Facebook post, he said that he was given the screenshot of the post.
He said that he had provided a low conservative estimate based on past scientific research.

The academician also revealed during the cross-examination that he was assisted by lawyers from Davinder Singh’s Chambers to prepare his report.

Mr Lim pointed out that a couple of paragraphs from Dr Phan’s report were worded the same as PM Lee’s affidavits of evidence-in-chief.
The lawyer charged that the expert report from Dr Phan is nothing more than “guesswork”, as the latter did not have metadata from Mr Leong’s post.

Mr Lim later argued that the “derisory” damages that ought to be awarded to PM Lee — if awarded — could entail “not more than” S$200 to S$400, even if the evidence provided by expert witness put forth by PM Lee was to be taken into account. “And that damage should not with be more than S$1 per person,” Mr Lim stressed.

In his judgement, Justice Aedit Abdullah found that the defamatory statement as compared to that made by Roy Ngerng was in fact worse and therefore, ordered an award of S$100,000 in general damages despite the lower reach and $33,000 for aggravated damages.

Wrong And Deeply Flawed Decision: Lim Tean

Mr Lim said in a Facebook post following the release of the judgment that he is “disappointed by the decision and believe the judgment to be wrong and deeply flawed” and Istrongly disagree with the Judge’s quantification of damages, which has no bearing to reality.

He wrote that the Judge did not appear to take into account many important critical facts in the case, including the fact that Mr Leong was the only person, out of over 9 000 others who shared the post, who was served with an IMDA notice to remove the alleged defamatory article.

“Sze Hian removed his post once he learnt of the IMDA Notice. But 3 days later, was served with a claim letter by Lee Hsien Loong. But Lee Hsien Loong did not even serve Claim letters on The States Times Review or The Coverage, who were the originators of the alleged libellous article.”

He added, How does one vindicate one’s reputation by not going after the originators of the words complained of? Our courts should not be entertaining surrogate litigation by allowing Plaintiffs to claim against persons such as Sze Hian who only share something they came across on SM, like over 9000 people did!

Mr Lim noted that he will be discussing and advising Mr Leong on the options open to him after today’s judgment.

Background of the Lee Hsien Loong vs Leong Sze Hian case

The defamation suit concerns an article by shared by Mr Leong on his personal Facebook Timeline titled “Breaking News: Singapore Lee Hsien Loong Becomes 1MDB’s Key Investigation Target – Najib Signed Several Unfair Agreements with Hsien Loong In Exchange For Money Laundering”.

The article, published by “Malaysian-based social news network” The Coverage, alleged that PM Lee had entered “several unfair agreements” with Najib Razak, who was the Malaysian Prime Minister at the time the deals purportedly took place, “including the agreement to build the Singapore-Malaysia High-Speed Rail”, according to court documents.

It is noted in Mr Leong’s submissions that he did not include any accompanying text alongside the article at the time he shared the article on 7 November 2018.

Mr Leong took down the article at 7.30am on 10 November 2018 after being instructed by the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA) to do so a day prior.

Prior to his removal of the post on 10 November, the court noted that Mr Leong’s article had garnered “22 ‘reactions’, five ‘comments’, and 18 ‘shares’”.

A writ of summons was subsequently filed by PM Lee against Mr Leong on 20 November that year for defamation, on the grounds that the offending article created the “false and baseless” impression that PM Lee had misused his position as Prime Minister to assist Najib’s money laundering activities in relation to 1MDB’s funds, and subsequently insinuated that PM Lee was “complicit in criminal activity” relating to the Malaysian state fund.

Crowdfunding initiative for Mr Leong’s case

As of Wednesday afternoon (31 Mar), Mr Leong has raised S$90,759 from crowdfunding.

Expressing his gratitude to those who have contributed to the crowdfunding initiative, Mr Leong on Sunday (28 Mar) shared what he perceived to be the most heartfelt, “teary” message he had received in the process.

Mr Leong quoted the individual as saying: “I am a common citizen, who is poor, jobless and had not earned a single cent for the whole of last year. I will still support you to bring right justice to my beloved country. God is on your side.”

Those who would like to donate to Mr Leong’s crowdfunding efforts may do so using the following details:

Account name: Leong Sze Hian
POSB Savings: 064064070
PayNow: S0009739Z
PayPal: [email protected]

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