Singapore’s Lee family feud: Lee Hsien Yang, wife must choose between fugitive status and returning home to clear name, minister says

Minister K Shanmugam says Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Suet Fern ‘will have every right to provide explanations’ in perjury probe if they return to Singapore to be interviewed by police
Lee Hsien Yang has said he will remain in self-exile in a Western country and fears he will not be able to see his sister, who is extremely unwell, face to face again

Singapore

Bhavan Jaipragas

Published: 8:06pm, 21 Mar 2023

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Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s younger brother and his wife have “essentially absconded” from the city state amid a police probe for perjury, authorities have said.

The new details revealed by the Minister for Home Affairs and Law, K Shanmugam, and the Singapore Police Force (SPF) come as the case involving Lee Hsien Yang and his lawyer wife Lee Suet Fern, and the long-running feud within the country’s most prominent political family remain hotly discussed on social media.

Observers have suggested the bickering among the three children of late independence leader Lee Kuan Yew could complicate the country’s politics ahead of a presidential poll later this year and a possible general election in 2024.

Lee Hsien Yang said on social media and in multiple interviews with international media that the police probe amounted to a fresh round of political persecution against him by his brother Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (pictured) government. Photo: Bloomberg

On March 3, Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean – responding to a lawmaker’s query on the status of the couple – said Lee Hsien Yang and his wife had “refused to attend” a police interview on whether they had perjured themselves during legal proceedings.

Subsequently, Lee Hsien Yang said on social media and in multiple interviews with international media that the police probe amounted to a fresh round of political persecution against him by his brother’s government and that he intended to remain in self-exile in an unnamed European country.

Shanmugam said in the legislature on Monday that the couple had initially been contacted by police to attend an interview.

They were not served a specific order under the Criminal Procedure Code to attend the interview but initially agreed to it. Later, they said they would attend the interview but left the country.

“Mr Lee Hsien Yang and Mrs Lee Suet Fern will have every right to provide explanations on the matters being investigated if they eventually decide to do the right thing and cooperate with the police,” Shanmugam said.

“It is their choice whether they want to be fugitives from justice, or whether they come and explain why they say the courts were wrong to say that they had lied,” the minister said, referring to the findings of a high-level judicial proceeding that found that the couple lied under oath.

Singapore’s Lee Hsien Yang and wife Lee Suet Fern face perjury probe

He was responding to a set of questions from opposition lawmakers on why the investigations had been made public and the couple named, when law enforcement agencies generally do not disclose the names of those under probe. Shanmugam said police in previous instances disclosed the names of those who have absconded.

The Court of Three Judges, which includes the country’s Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and is the highest judicial body for misconduct by lawyers, in a 2020 ruling indicated that Lee Hsien Yang and Lee Suet Fern lied under oath. The court affirmed a similar finding by a lower judicial body, a disciplinary tribunal, which similarly said the couple lied in proceedings before it.

Separately, the SPF has released details on its communications with the Lees. The force said police met the couple on June 9 last year to ask them to attend an interview.

The couple confirmed on June 13 they would attend an interview on July 13 but failed to turn up, having left the country on June 15, the SPF said in a statement that was published in full by The Straits Times on Tuesday.

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“In this case, since the couple appeared cooperative when first engaged by the police, and had agreed to be interviewed, the police did not issue an order under the Criminal Procedure Code,” the statement said. “This is consistent with how police deal with cases of a similar nature.”

There was no immediate response on social media by Lee Hsien Yang to the latest government comments on the case.

On March 7, the former army brigadier-general said in a lengthy Facebook post that he was “heartbroken that I have been made a fugitive by my own country, for standing up for a promise to my father Lee Kuan Yew”.

The younger Lee revealed that his sister Lee Wei Ling – who has been allied with him in the dispute with Prime Minister Lee – was “extremely unwell”. “It pains me beyond words that I am unlikely ever to be able to see my sister face to face again,” Lee wrote.

The dispute among the siblings centres around the future of the 19th-century bungalow that their father Lee Kuan Yew called home from the 1940s until his death at age 91 in 2015.

Lee Hsien Yang and his sister Lee Wei Ling have said their father wanted the home demolished, but the government’s position is that the property has significant historical value and a decision on its fate is one for a future administration to make.

Prime Minister Lee has refuted his younger siblings’ claim that he hoped to keep the bungalow intact as a means for his ruling People’s Action Party to continue benefiting from the reverence with which most Singaporeans view Lee Kuan Yew.