Bungalow Scandal, Chip Dreams
Bloomberg's bungalow story costs big, chip packaging gets a leg-up, Hin Leong's $2.6B claim is dismissed, and the Health Ministry under-declared funds.
Singapore business, finance and trade news, every Monday.
Bloomberg's Bungalow Story Costs S$460,000
A Tuesday ruling found that Bloomberg and reporter Low De Wei maliciously defamed ministers K Shanmugam and Tan See Leng in a December 2024 story on secretive "good class bungalow" deals, and ordered payments of S$230,000 (about $172,000) in damages to each. The article mentioned Shanmugam's S$88 million ($65.5 million) sale of his Queen Astrid Park home to UBS Trustees and Tan's S$27.3 million ($20.3 million) non-caveated Brizay Park purchase as examples of luxury deals that were cloaked from scrutiny, and gave a nod to the S$3 billion ($2.2 billion) money laundering scandal that it placed a few short paragraphs away. The justice decided that Low knew, or didn't care, that non-caveated transactions are searchable through the Singapore Land Authority's integrated land information service, a system he had used himself. She also found malice in Bloomberg's decision to lift the article's paywall after regulators gave a correction direction, saying it was an attempt to get the story in front of more people. Editor-in-chief John Micklethwait said Bloomberg stands by the story and its reporter, and didn’t say if the company would appeal.
Read more: The Guardian (USD conversion), Business Times (paywall timing)
Powertech, Broadcom Bet $400M on SG Chip Packaging
Taiwan's Powertech Technology is putting US$400 million into a Singapore JV with Broadcom to develop a chip packaging method that it says is the replacement for older methods as chips get denser. The board approved the project Thursday, but it’s still pending sign-off from Taiwan's Department of Investment Review and other agencies. It comes as AI-driven chip demand is doing some heavy lifting for Singapore's electronics exports. Powertech says that the packaging work it already does for other clients won't be affected, and its Taiwan operations will keep the "core technologies and critical intellectual properties." No construction timeline was shared.
Read more: Focustaiwan TW (JV approval), Business Times (GDP breakdown), Business Times (export breakdown)
Deloitte Dodges Hin Leong's $2.6B Claim
A Court of Appeal threw out the largest of Hin Leong Trading's claims against Deloitte, the $2.6 billion it wanted to get to make up for trading losses racked up between November 2015 and mid-April 2020. The court ruled that auditors have no duty to weigh creditors' interests when a client is insolvent, and that Hin Leong's trading losses were never reasonably foreseeable to Deloitte, which had no insight into founder Lim Oon Kuin's trading strategies. Two smaller claims survive, however, and will make it to trial. One is $90 million over dividends the Lim family allegedly wrongfully declared, and the other is S$612,000 ($455,000) in audit engagement fees.
Read more: Business Times
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Auditor Finds Ministry’s Undeclared Stash
The Ministry of Health did not declare S$147.96 million ($110 million) in savings from the National Cancer Centre Singapore project, and then it used the money to fund three items, two of which a planning committee had already rejected. The auditor also found approvals were received after works had started or finished, and S$2.2 million ($1.6 million) in loss and expense payments were never properly substantiated. The Auditor-General's latest report also flagged HDB for allocating flats and disbursing housing grants to ineligible applicants. The Ministry of Finance says agencies are investigating and working to claw back overpayments; some cases will be referred to the police.
Read more: Business Times
GovTech Cuts 93 and Brings Work In-House
GovTech announced that 93 of its ~3,900 staff are out, the first phase of a two-year restructuring that will cut up to almost one in ten roles. Chairman Chng Kai Fong told employees the agency is making a move from managing vendor-delivered projects to running products in-house, and was keen to say that the restructuring "is not an AI-driven downsizing exercise" and "began years before the current AI wave." Of the roles under review, 102 staff were kept in place and 110 were sent into apprenticeships to reskill, leaving the 93 as the remainder. Affected staff have been offered a Special Resignation Scheme.
Read more: Business Times (PSD clarification), Business Times (blame debate)
MAS Eyes Tax Cut to Keep Fund Managers From HK
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has been talking with investment firms about cutting the 10% tax rate under a special incentive scheme that’s already well below the standard 17% corporate rate, after fund executives warned that Hong Kong's tax plans could be cause for relocations. Hong Kong is proposing to exempt carried interest from tax calculations, and that’s the share of investment profits that often make up the bulk of a fund manager's pay. HK has also relaxed rules on family offices, embraced crypto and floated looser regulation for mutual funds.
Read more: BreakingtheNews (operating cost cuts), Business Standard (FT July date)
RTS Link's S$290 Million Annual Outflow
The first hard numbers on the RTS Link's cross-border spend have arrived. A study put together by the Singapore Business Federation, Restaurant Association of Singapore, and Singapore Retailers Association projects Singaporeans will spend S$1.05 billion ($781 million) more in Johor Bahru yearly once the link opens in January. That’s versus and expected S$756 million ($562 million) flowing the other way, making a net outflow of S$290 million ($216 million), or 0.4 percent of 2025 retail and F&B sales. The link will mean an additional 11.2 million Singapore-to-JB round trips a year compared with 3.3 million coming in, for about 40k daily crossings. The north, which already leaks spend across the Causeway, is expected to get squeezed hardest.
Read more: Business Times
Gaming and Shopping Lift Tourism Take to S$8.6B
Visitor spending was S$8.6 billion ($6.4 billion) in Q1 ‘26, up 5.8 percent, but arrivals grew by a narrower 2.9 percent to 4.4 million. Sightseeing, entertainment and gaming were up 22.8 percent to S$2 billion and shopping rose 7 percent to S$1.4 billion. F&B slipped 1.9 percent and hotel receipts were pretty much flat. Mainland China was able to keep its position as the top source market at S$1.3 billion (visitors up 9.9 percent to 913,407), and Indonesia's 626,225 arrivals brought in S$719.7 million, down 0.5 percent. Spending had already eased 1.1 percent from the previous quarter.
Read more: Business Times
Curacao Bookie Bets on HDB Flats
GemBet, a Curacao-registered site claiming Luka Modric as brand ambassador and Athletic Bilbao as its Southeast Asian betting partner, has been sending Singapore punters' World Cup wagers through three Singaporean shell firms that were set up between March and May, all registered to HDB units. PayNow transfers and payouts move through these companies before ending up in punters' GemBet wallets. Visits to the three addresses turned up a man who'd lived at one unit for a decade and didn't recognise the listed owner's name, and a 23-year-old full-time NSman listed at another. The platform, operated by Curacao-incorporated Grand Complications NV with payments handled through Cyprus-based subsidiary Rockman Enterprises, bills itself online as a home-grown operation set up in 2020.
Read more: AsiaOne
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