Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister from 2009 to 2018, is implicated in the case and has been sentenced to 12 years in jail in one of a series of trials linking him to the theft. 

Leong posted the article, published by the Malaysian website The Coverage, without comment. He later took down the post but failed to comply with demands by Lee’s lawyers for a public apology and damages for disseminating its “false and baseless” contents. 

In his written judgment, Justice Aedit Abdullah said Leong’s act of sharing the post on Facebook had caused the libel to be published “to a sufficient number of persons in Singapore to warrant substantial damages”. 

“It was, at the very least, reckless disregard of whether the article was true or not for the defendant to have posted it without making any enquiries as to its truth whatsoever,” the judge said. “When seen cumulatively with his refusal to apologise for the defamatory words, malice may be made out on the facts.”

Lee’s lawyers had sought S$150,000 in damages – the same amount that was awarded to the prime minister in his 2014 case against blogger Roy Ngerng. 

Abdullah, however, observed that the number of people who viewed the defamatory material in the Ngerng case – the first time Lee had sued a blogger – was far larger. He said he also did not observe the same level of “significant malice and aggravation” in Leong’s case as was found in the ruling against Ngerng.

Still, the judge said there was cause for an award of S$100,000 in general damages as the defamatory statement in Leong’s post was “worse” as it claimed “that the plaintiff was involved in a cross-border defalcation of the funds belonging to the citizens of another country, in cooperation with the leader of that country”. 

A further S$33,000 was awarded for aggravated damages. Lee’s lawyer had argued that the libel had been aggravated by various actions taken by Leong including giving an interview to Amnesty International Hong Kong that served to “wage a public campaign to gain sympathy and support”. 

Lim Tean, the leader of the Peoples Voice party and Leong’s lawyer, in a Facebook post said he was disappointed by the “wrong and deeply flawed” judgment. 

He referred to the fact that the initial libel was committed by The Coverage, and questioned “how does one vindicate one’s reputation by not going after the originators of the words complained of”. 

Prime Minister Lee had no comment on the judgment, local media quoted his press secretary Chang Li Lin as saying.

The judgment on a separate libel case brought by Lee against blogger Terry Xu is expected soon, after the trial ended in February. Lee had sued Xu, editor of the The Online Citizen Asia portal, over an August 2019 article that repeated assertions by the prime minister’s siblings.

Lee has dismissed these claims, but he has said he is choosing not to launch libel suits against his siblings.

In his testimony during the trial, the prime minister said: “On the allegations made by my siblings, I had decided to take a different approach with them and it did not mean carte blanche for anybody else to use that to spread those allegations and further defame me.”