Hearing opens on Singaporean Prime Minister’s defamation suit

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (Photo: AFP/VNA)

Lee had sued Leong over a post the blogger shared on his Facebook page on November 7, 2018, which contained a link to an article by Malaysian news site The Coverage.

The article contained allegations that former Malaysian PM Najib Razak had signed "secret deals" with PM Lee in exchange for Singapore banks' help in laundering money from scandal-ridden Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB. The content of the article had been taken from the States Times Review (STR) site, owned by Singaporean national Alex Tan Zhi Xiang, who lives in Australia.

Lee's lawyers said that the article contained "false and baseless" allegations and charged that Leong shared the post "maliciously" to damage their client. Leong subsequently deleted the post.

Leong has said he "merely shared" the article without adding comments or changing the content and rejected allegations that he maliciously posted the article./.

VNA