Ministers’ lawyer says Bloomberg article was edited to link GCB deals to money laundering
Selina Lum
The Straits Times
April 14, 2026
Two paragraphs in a Bloomberg story on good class bungalow (GCB) transactions in Singapore were moved in the final version of the article to link two ministers to “concerns over money laundering”, their lawyer contended on April 14.
Senior Counsel Davinder Singh charged that this was done as part of an agenda by Bloomberg journalists to target Coordinating Minister for National Security K. Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng.
The lawyer made the assertion as he cross-examined Mr Low De Wei, the reporter who wrote the article, for the second day.
Mr Singh said that in a draft version, the two paragraphs, which talked about moves to combat money laundering in the UK and New York, followed a reference to Singapore’s $3 billion money laundering case.
But in the published version, the paragraphs were “pulled away” and placed under the subheading “Non-caveated deals”.
The two paragraphs came immediately after a mention of Dr Tan’s property deal and just before Mr Shanmugam’s property deal was mentioned, said Mr Singh.
Mr Low, who is also known as Dexter, agreed that the paragraphs were moved, but denied Mr Singh’s suggestion of ill intention. “We don’t have any agenda,” said Mr Low.
He said he was not sure if the paragraphs were moved by himself, his editor or someone else.
Mr Shanmugam, who is also Home Affairs Minister, and Dr Tan have sued Bloomberg and Mr Low over the piece published on Dec 12, 2024, headlined “Singapore mansion deals are increasingly shrouded in secrecy”.
The article mentioned the ministers’ property deals in 2023 – the sale of Mr Shanmugam’s former home in the Queen Astrid Park area to UBS Trustees for $88 million and Dr Tan’s non-caveated purchase of a bungalow in Brizay Park for nearly $27.3 million.
The article states that the ultra-rich in Singapore are increasingly cloaking their purchases of mansions in secrecy, such as by using trusts to keep their identities private.
It also states that deals without caveats are much harder to track because they do not show up in a database maintained by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA).
A caveat is a legal document that property buyers and mortgage lenders can submit to the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) to prevent a property from being sold to others.
The court earlier heard that details of such deals can be found in a separate portal run by SLA.
On his first day on the stand on April 13, Mr Low said the article was referring to information being kept secret from the public, not from the Government.
On April 14, Mr Singh continued to grill Mr Low, who maintained that the story was about foreign wealth coming into the GCB market.
The senior counsel took Mr Low through draft versions of the article and internal e-mails, as he sought to show that the article was trying to link secret deals to money laundering.
Mr Singh first referred to a seven-paragraph document which he said was Mr Low’s story pitch to his supervisor in August 2024.
Mr Low insisted that it was a draft, saying: “All drafts are by nature incomplete.”
In the document, Mr Low said that a “secretive market” had emerged to cater to the ultra-rich who want to keep deals “under wraps” as scrutiny grows.
He said that partly due to the nation’s largest money laundering scandal, buyers are willing to pay more but only if their transactions “do not see the light of day”, and that this was “making an already murky market more opaque”.
When questioned in court, Mr Low said he was referring not to actual money laundering but the fact that there was a scandal.
He added that the rich wanted to keep property deals under wraps to avoid negative association with money laundering.
Mr Singh noted that following the pitch, Mr Low’s supervisor had posed several questions, including whether these deals needed to be vetted by the Government and whether anti-money laundering standards were maintained in Singapore.
Mr Singh asked if he was talking about the public or the Government in relation to money laundering in the pitch.
Mr Low replied that his story “references money laundering but is not about money laundering”.
Mr Singh also referred to a later occasion when Mr Low’s supervisor asked him to make checks to answer the question of whether the Government is aware of the identities of the people who use trusts to buy bungalows.
The lawyer pointed out that contrary to what Mr Low told the court on April 13, even his supervisor thought the article was about the Government in relation to the identities of the trust beneficiaries and money laundering.
Mr Low disagreed. “It’s just a question that she wants answered.”
Mr Low was also questioned about a portion of the article in which he quoted a property agent, Mr William Wong, as saying that “there are more and more buyers who prefer to be low profile”.
This was followed by a sentence which said “that’s especially been the case” after the money laundering scandal erupted, and another sentence which referred to 10 money launderers who have since been convicted, jailed and deported.
Mr Low was questioned at length about how these sentences came about.
Initially, he said he had paraphrased Mr Wong, who made reference to the money laundering case over WhatsApp.
After Justice Audrey Lim asked to see the message, Mr Low admitted that the information from the sentences did not come from Mr Wong, who had only said “money laundering saga”.
This prompted Mr Singh to accuse Mr Low of trying to mislead the court.
The lawyer noted that Mr Wong had also cited privacy as a reason why more buyers want to be low profile. Mr Singh said Mr Low picked from what Mr Wong had told him and focused on money laundering because he wanted to “spice up the article”.
The trial continues on April 15.
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