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Telco resilience regulations reviewed after Singtel outage | The Straits Times

Telco resilience regulations under review following...

Ps, had to edit title due to the word limits

Nothing to do with the defamation case per se but at the end of the day, the issue is : some authority somewhere must know who bought and sold houses here.

And if they do, is this something they can share or make public? Under what conditions? And to who? An understanding of the process would be more useful to readers befuddled by this court case.

Hmm. Is the queen astrid park house empty? Who’s living there? Media ever go knock on door or not?

Original Article Link: Shanmugam confirms prior awareness of Bloomberg POFMA order; may have shared demand letter

Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam confirmed in the Singapore High Court on 9 April 2026 that he had known the government's Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) correction order against Bloomberg would be issued before it was made.

The confirmation came on the third day of the defamation trial brought by Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng against Bloomberg LP and its reporter Dexter Low De Wei over a 12 December 2024 article on Good Class Bungalow (GCB) transactions.

The article was headlined "Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy." It referred to Shanmugam's S$88 million sale of his GCB in the Queen Astrid Park area to UBS Trustees (Singapore) Ltd in August 2023, and Dr Tan's S$27.3 million purchase of a property at Brizay Park the same year.

Both ministers allege the article defamed them by suggesting they had carried out property transactions in a non-transparent manner that raised the spectre of money laundering. Bloomberg and Low deny this. The trial is before Justice Audrey Lim.

The POFMA direction was issued on 23 December 2024. Bloomberg did not challenge it but has stated it stands by its reporting. The article remains published at the time of the trial and time of publication of this article.

The exchange on prior awareness

Senior Counsel Sreenivasan Narayanan, acting for Bloomberg, asked Shanmugam whether he had been aware the POFMA order would be made before it was issued.

Shanmugam said answering would require him to go into the workings of government. He said he needed advice from his solicitors on Section 125 of the Evidence Act, government privilege, and the Attorney General's advice. He said the matter had been raised previously and not pursued after his solicitors indicated it could not be answered.

He added: "I've got nothing to hide. I'm perfectly happy to answer. But I need to take advice."

Sreenivasan told the court he had phrased his question carefully, acknowledging that communications were privileged, and said he was not seeking the government's inner workings. He said he only wanted to know Shanmugam's state of mind.

Shanmugam said Section 125 covered not only communications but also evidence.

Justice Lim then asked Shanmugam directly: "So Mr Shanmugam, were you aware the POFMA order would be made prior to it being made?"

Shanmugam replied: "Yes, Your Honour."

The letter of demand and the correction direction

Following the answer, Sreenivasan directed Shanmugam to his letter of demand, dated 19 December 2024, which stated that the entire premise of the article — that there are no checks and balances and that there are no disclosure requirements — is false; that it is false to state there are no publicly available records of property transactions when a caveat is not filed; that the government does not know the identity of the beneficiary when a trust mechanism is used; and that a lack of public record coupled with trust structures means there are no checks on the purchaser, allowing money laundering, because primary responsibility for checking rests on real estate agents and service providers.

Sreenivasan then put to Shanmugam the five subject statements in the government's Factually article, which accompanied the POFMA direction issued four days later on 23 December 2024. He asked whether there was a similarity in the points being made.

Shanmugam agreed: "Your Honour, there is a similarity in the points being made."

Sreenivasan then asked, framing his question explicitly to avoid engaging section 125 or the Official Secrets Act, whether the letter of demand had been made available to those drafting the POFMA direction.

Shanmugam answered: "No, Your Honour. The letter of demand was not made available to those drafting the POFMA direction."

The re-examination account of cabinet sharing

Singh also returned to the cross-examination answer in which Shanmugam had said the letter of demand was not made available to those drafting the direction. He directed Shanmugam to that exchange and asked him to clarify what he had meant by "those drafting POFMA."

Shanmugam said: "Your Honour, the people who go and draft these things, I did not give them the letter of demand."

He then continued: "But just for completeness, I should say, obviously, I kept my senior colleagues and cabinet informed. I mean, it would be unthinkable of me not to speak with them to say I'm going to sue. A minister suing Bloomberg or any other media is something that we keep our colleagues informed of and I've done it in the past as well."

He added: "Whether I share with them a letter of demand, I may have, or I may have summarized to be very clear the position I'm taking. And that's common and expected within a cabinet."

He continued: "The letter of demand was shared with, I believe, some people. Cabinet colleagues, senior colleagues, knew about it. I told them, I summarized the case, I gave my views and I said I'm going to sue."

He concluded: "I believe I might have shared it with some of my colleagues."

Shanmugam does NOT know beneficial owner of his S$88m GCB, defamation hearing reveals

Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam admitted under cross-examination that he does not know who the ultimate beneficial owner of his S$88 million Good Class Bungalow is,

as the defamation trial against Bloomberg and its reporter opened in Singapore's High Court on 7 April 2026.

Minister does not know beneficial owner of his GCB

Under cross-examination, Shanmugam admitted that he does not know who the ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) of his GCB is. The property, valued at S$88 million (approximately US$68.5 million), was purchased using a trust structure.

Sreenivasan put to Shanmugam that his press secretary had reportedly said he does not know whom he sold the house to because it was sold to a trustee. When asked to confirm the accuracy of that statement, Shanmugam said: "Yes, Your Honour."

When Sreenivasan further put to him that his press secretary had said only his lawyers and bankers would know the identity of the buyer, Shanmugam rejected that characterisation, describing it as nonsensical and inaccurate. He said it was impossible for his lawyers to know something that he himself did not know.

Minister's press secretary told Bloomberg it was a private matter

Senior Counsel Sreenivasan put to Shanmugam the substance of communications between his press secretary, Ms Ng Siew Hua, and Low. Counsel asked whether there were any written notes of what Shanmugam had instructed Ng to convey. Shanmugam confirmed there were none.

Defence counsel put to Shanmugam that Ng had conveyed to Low that he could not issue a POFMA direction against TOC's 12 September 2024 article because the transaction was a private matter, that the only available channel would have been to sue TOC, and that he had no intention of doing so.

Shanmugam confirmed this was broadly accurate, saying the TOC article would not have been liable to any action under POFMA as it involved a private matter, and that he had no intention of suing over it.

Shanmugam also testified that the Astrid Hill transaction was a completely private matter and that he had no idea Bloomberg intended to publish a story about it.

SINGAPORE: Bloomberg's defence counsel on Thursday (Apr 9) took issue with a correction direction by the government regarding its news article, challenging Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam to point out where the false statements were.

In his cross-examination of Mr Shanmugam, Senior Counsel Sreenivasan Narayanan noted that almost none of the false statements pointed out by the government appeared verbatim in what was eventually published

Full article in the above link provided.

Ps, had to paraphrase due to the word limits. Above title is referenced from the below CNA article:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/defence-questions-shanmugam-bloomberg-article-lie-defamation-6043306

***Pointing to examples from news outlet The Straits Times, Mr Sreenivasan argued that high-value property transactions, including those involving GCBs, are routinely covered in mainstream media.

Mr Shanmugam replied: "I agree that such private transactions are sometimes reported, but you will have to go and look at the context of each, as to why they were being reported."

"I don't recall coming across a report one year after the transaction had taken place. Nor did I come across any of the other things that this article suggests," he said, referring to the fact that Bloomberg's report came a year after he sold his GCB.

Moving on, Mr Sreenivasan then took Mr Shanmugam through Bloomberg's published article, referring to specific paragraphs that did not mention the minister or his co-claimant Dr Tan by name.***

At this, Mr Shanmugam said that while Dr Tan was not referred to directly for most of the article, there was "indirect reference" if the article is read as a whole. 

Mr Shanmugam also disagreed with a line in the article that said the sale of his property, originally bought for S$7.95 million in 2003, has become "political fodder". 

This is referring to a line in the article that said an opposition party leader, Mr Chee Soon Juan, had questioned how the bungalow's recent valuation was determined and who the new owner was. Mr Sreenivasan noted that internal Bloomberg emails said another political opposition figure – which he did not identify – was also "talking this up".

Mr Shanmugam disagreed that the sale had become "political fodder", adding: "To me, two politicians who have no seats in parliament, and who have been, if my recollections serve me right, never won a seat in parliament, raising questions, does not make it political fodder."

Ps had to paraphrase a bit due to the word limits.

More targeted measures ⛽️💡

***Much has happened overnight with crude oil prices…but with petrol prices up nearly 20% and diesel prices up close to 70% in just a month, small business owners, especially those with diesel vehicles, are being hit hard…

I asked if the government will consider targeted support mechanisms to ease these fuel costs, in the spirit of what the ministers have said about not using blunt measures.

Separately, since industrial and commercial demand represent the vast majority of electricity demand, and households account for only 6% of Singapore’s electricity use, I also asked whether more targeted measures will be introduced for businesses to step up on energy efficiency and conservation, instead of asking everyone to save energy.

#wpsg #workingforsingapore***

𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐠𝐨 𝐔𝐧𝐢, 𝐎𝐱𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐝, 𝐉𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐨 𝐁𝐓𝐎𝐬 – 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝟒𝐆 𝐄𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐰𝐧 𝐋𝐨𝐡 𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐭 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐑𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐊𝐢𝐝𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲

*I wonder how many of you watched MP Shawn Loh's interview with Mothership, which was released sometime last week. I watched a snippet of it where he said that university education should not be funded by parents for their children. He said both his sibling and he did not expect their parents to pay for their education.

If you need proof that the new MPs and much of the 4G leadership are out of touch with how people on the ground feel, this is another example of it.

Survey after survey shows that parents here are very concerned about making sure that their children get a tertiary education. Ten years ago, parents were spending as much as $21,000 a year on average for their child's university education. I know it's not cheap. My own children were in university at about that time. It must have gone up significantly by now.

The same surveys show that more than 50% of parents are willing to go into debt to fund their child’s university education, and more than half prioritise education funding above paying bills or saving for retirement. Almost all students heading for university rely on “the bank of mum and dad”: 95% of parents foot at least some of the cost.

And these are the hard facts: In 2023, families spent $1.8 billion on private tuition, with top‑income households spending over four times as much as bottom‑income households. It's an education arms race. There is intense competition and financial pressure around education pathways that lead to tertiary entry, and no expense is spared by parents to help their children achieve what's best for their future.

This is where Shawn can shine more light. What kind of background did he come from? Is he from a higher‑SES household? Could his parents afford super tutors? Did they engage any? There is scant information about Shawn's background in the public space, but these are relevant questions because he has a Bachelor’s in Economics from the University of Chicago and a Master’s in Financial Economics from the University of Oxford, both globally elite, very expensive institutions. Very few Singaporeans, especially from working‑class backgrounds, could self‑fund Chicago + Oxford in economics without substantial scholarships and institutional support.

If you had super tutors who helped springboard you to a government scholarship to a global elite university, you should not call it “not relying on parents' money” to get to university, should you?

On top of that, look at his career. Shawn didn’t just study at the University of Chicago and Oxford; he went on to build a trajectory through the Ministry of Education, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Finance, and now Parliament. This is not the typical pathway of someone who had to struggle without support. It is the path of someone who has been groomed, backed and trusted by the system – and that makes it even harder to swallow when he turns around to tell ordinary Singaporean families that they should shoulder university costs on their own.

Surely you do see the rot at the core, don't you? If he did benefit from scholarships or heavily subsidised local education earlier, then taxpayers ultimately financed a large part of his trajectory, directly or indirectly. Whatever it may be, here is someone who has clearly benefited from high‑status, high‑cost education now moralising that the next generation should not expect either parents or the state to fund theirs.

And when the interviewer from Mothership, whom I must say did a pretty decent job of bringing him down from his ivory tower, told him that her parents actually didn't pay for her university, but took a bank loan, which her mum paid and which she then paid her mum back, and that this set her back in her savings because that is a large sum of money that would eventually go into things like her wedding and her future house. And that a university degree in Singapore is still quite coveted because that degree becomes a job and then that job adds to the economy and impacts society. So, her own experience told her that it is okay to save up for her child. She said that's where she got her free university idea from.

And when she had said all of that, all Shawn could say was: “You are very far‑sighted. You are very far‑sighted. Such a planner.”

Oh come on! She got you. And all you could do was placate her by saying “you are such a planner”? Just admit that you are wrong. Your views from the ivory tower, from the lens of the elite‑of‑the‑elites, are not fit for the world we live in.

This is why I say we have two Singapores: one for the ultra‑rich-class, the top 1%, and the elites like Shawn, and the other for the rest of us.

And then he fudges around the idea of children as a public good: on the one hand, he justifies free childcare because children benefit the next generation and “our national identity”, but on the other hand he refuses to see tertiary education in the same way.

Shawn, I have news for you. In a country where fertility rates have dropped so drastically to the point where a committee had to be formed with a Cabinet Minister heading it, children are the closest thing to a public good because everyone depends on them for a future cohort of workers, taxpayers, caregivers, and citizens.

This is why Red Dot United proposed the Child Trust Fund, an endowment fund where $200,000 is set aside for every Singaporean child from birth, kept intact as principal and invested over time, with only the interest and returns released at key milestones like higher education and specialised apprenticeship pathways, so parents are not left wondering how to find $30,000 to $50,000 for university or skills training, but can rely on a system that has already ringfenced that support for their child from day one.

We refuse to trivialise the anxieties of our young people when they are deciding if they should bring a new life into our world, a world which is ageing super fast, and where the working class is told that we are at the mercy of immigration and foreigners.

When you put all this together, you see a pattern. On one hand, you have MPs like David Hoe, who thinks promising “jumbo BTO flats” to couples who contractually commit to having more children will somehow fix our fertility crisis. On the other, you have MPs like Shawn Loh, who tells ordinary families that parents and government should not be funding university education, as if most young people are not already straining under loans and precarious futures.

Both positions reveal the same thing: a deeply elitist, out‑of‑touch view of what ordinary Singaporeans fear, hope for, and aspire to. They treat housing and education as levers to push people into decisions, instead of listening to the real anxieties about costs, security and dignity.

That is the heart of the problem: there are two Singapores – one designed and narrated by elites in Parliament, and another, much harsher one lived every day by the rest of us.*