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A trial in Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s defamation lawsuit against The Online Citizen (TOC) editor Terry Xu concluded yesterday after Xu’s attorney Lim Tean briefly questioned Ms. Kwa Kim Li, who prepared six wills for the late Mr. Lee Kuan Yew.
He took the stand in the afternoon, after Judge Audrey Lim denied his request to vacate a summons in the morning.
Ms. Kwa, Managing Partner of Lee and Lee Law Firm, is the niece of the late wife of the founding Prime Minister, Kwa Geok Choo.
While she had prepared the first six wills for Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, Ms. Kwa cut off communications for her seventh and last will. She has previously said that she did not prepare the last will.
During yesterday’s 40-minute hearing, Mr. Lim took Ms. Kwa through a series of emails that Mr. Xu had relied on to show that Mr. Lee Kuan Yew believed his home had been published.
Prime Minister Lee is suing Mr. Xu over the claims he made in a TOC article published on August 15 last year.
The allegedly defamatory statements in the article include an allegation that PM Lee had misled his father into believing that the 38 Oxley Road house had been published by the government and that it was therefore useless for Mr. Lee Kuan Yew to keep his order to demolish it. .
DEMOLITION CLAUSE
Mr. Lim asked Ms. Kwa to confirm whether a clause related to the demolition of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew’s house on Oxley Road had been included in the first four of the six wills that she prepared for him, but not in the last two. Ms. Kwa confirmed it.
However, the demolition clause was later included in the late Mr. Lee’s final will on December 17, 2013.
Mr. Lim also asked Ms. Kwa to confirm that she had written several handwritten notes on copies of various emails and letters between her and the Lee family.
One of those notes read “Ling one more share”, referring to Mr. Lee Kuan Yew giving his daughter, Dr. Lee Wei Ling, an additional share of the estate compared to his siblings in earlier versions of his will. . The final will provided all three equal parts.
Another had the words “I can’t find the gazette. I told you so”, which Ms. Kwa had written in a copy of an email that Mr. Lee Kuan Yew had sent to Ms. Kwa and Dr. Lee on September 6, 2012.
Ms. Kwa told the court that she had indeed written the words and that “he” in the note referred to Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. He also said that he had written “I cannot find the Oxley Gazette” in a copy of an email from the late Mr. Lee to Ms. Kwa, dated October 16, 2012.
Judge Audrey Lim asked Ms. Kwa to confirm that both emails referred to the results of her attempts to find a document showing that the Oxley Road house had been published.
“That is correct,” Ms. Kwa replied.
He added that he did not remember how many times he had tried to find such a document, but that “it would be at least twice.”
When Mr. Lim asked if he had informed Mr. Lee Kuan Yew of the result each time after she did a search, Ms. Kwa said that the answer was privileged.
She gave the same answer to several other questions Lim asked, which related to her attorney-client relationship with the late Mr. Lee.
However, when he said this in response to Mr. Lim’s questions about two notes he had written that said “Loong has free rein” and “he can run the Cabinet”, Judge Lim told him to answer them.
“I don’t think it is a privilege. This is what is written, so we would like clarification on who ‘he’ is,” the judge said.
In response, Ms Kwa confirmed that she was referring to PM Lee. The parties were given four weeks to submit written submissions to Judge Lim, who will deliver his sentence at a later date.
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