Leong Sze Hian playfully describes himself as the first person ever to be sued for sharing a news story on Facebook with no accompanying comment.
The 67-year-old financial advisor, blogger and opposition politician is the latest critic to lose a punitive libel suit against Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who is widely seen as following in his national founder father Lee Kuan Yew’s footsteps in using lawsuits to stifle dissent.
The offending post came at a steep price. Last month, a court judge ordered Leong to pay the premier, the world’s highest-paid political leader, S$133,000 (US$98,867) in damages for defamation. Justice Aedit Abdullah found that Leong could not “reasonably claim that the defamatory words” in the link he shared “did not impugn [Lee’s] character.”
The article in question was published by Malaysian website The Coverage in November 2018, and falsely alleged that Lee was involved in financial fraud and working in cahoots with former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak to launder funds in the multi-billion dollar 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal.
Read the full story at Asia Times.
Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.
