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SINGAPORE – The lawyer who prepared six wills for the late founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew will appear in High Court on Thursday (December 3) to testify in a defamation lawsuit against The Online Citizen (TOC) editor Terry Xu.
Ms. Kwa Kim Li, who did not handle the late Lee’s seventh and final will, was subpoenaed by Lim Tean of Carson Law Chambers, who represents Xu in the defamation lawsuit brought by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Ms. Kwa is the niece of the late Mr. Lee’s wife, Kwa Geok Choo.
The case centers on claims made by TOC in an article published on August 15 last year, titled “PM Lee’s wife Ho Ching shares an article on severing ties with family members.”
The TOC article had commented on how PM Lee’s wife, Ms. Ho Ching, had shared a link on Facebook to an article titled “Here’s why it’s okay to sever ties with toxic family members sometimes.”
He also referenced statements and Facebook posts previously made by PM Lee’s brothers, Mr. Lee Hsien Yang and Dr. Lee Wei Ling.
In September last year, Prime Minister Lee asked TOC to remove the article, along with a Facebook post linking it, and publish a full and unconditional apology.
The prime minister’s press secretary, Ms. Chang Li Lin, had said that the allegations in the article and publication were defamatory and repeated several false accusations against Prime Minister Lee that her sister had previously made.
These included allegations that PM Lee had misled his father into believing that his house 38 Oxley Road had been listed by the government and that it was therefore useless for Mr. Lee Kuan Yew to uphold his order to demolish it.
PM Lee also said that the article alleged that Mr. Lee Kuan Yew had removed PM Lee as executor and trustee of his will after it was revealed to him in late 2013 that the 38 Oxley Road property had in fact not been published.
Xu has disputed this in court, saying his article was not intended to establish a link between the time the late Lee allegedly discovered the hoax and the time he removed PM Lee as the executor of his estate.
Mr. Xu first requested the summons of Ms. Kwa on October 7 of this year. This came after he was able to obtain copies of documents that emerged during disciplinary court investigations into the misconduct of Mr. Lee Hsien Yang’s wife, Lead Attorney Lee Suet Fern.
The documents included emails exchanged between Ms. Kwa and the late Mr. Lee in 2011 and 2012, which Xu relied on to show that the founding prime minister believed her house had been published and that Ms. Kwa subsequently told him I couldn’t find the gazette notice.
The one-week test continues at 2:45 p.m. on Thursday.
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