Singapore Lee Kuan Yew family's lucrative extortion racket, defamation lawsuits.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Unlike Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, dictators around the world usually use violence and murder to stay in power.

Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini murdered millions to silence and destroy their opposition. The recently dead Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew didn't murder anyone, he had invented instead his singularly unique  ingenious highly efficient method to do the same without the mess and the blood, which is Defamation Lawsuits, something for which he has become world famous throughout the world.

And it turned out not only to be thoroughly effective in destroying his opponents, it has turned out to be a highly profitable business enterprise as well . In effect, it is a state operated extortion racket.

This was how it is done.

You first need a thoroughly disgraceful judiciary who willingly abandon their respected role of independent arbiters of the law, and instead become sort of prostitutes for money.

Their job is to shamelessly abuse their judicial office decked in judicial robes to hear trumped up charges against critics on charges of  impropriety against the Lee family and deliver outrageously inflated judgment awards, which will either immensely enrich the Lee family and destroy the poor defendant altogether.

If the defendant pays, the Lees get another windfall, if they don't they are bankrupted and destroyed. Either way the Lee family wins.

As for the defamation judgment awards, we are not talking about $5,000 or even $10,000.00 but $300,000 or more. And if the defendant is naïve enough to persist in speaking out, repeated lawsuits with repeated $300,000.00 or more.

Take the case of JB Jeyaretnam, now deceased. He was a highly vocal critic. He was sued so many times that he had already paid more than a $1 million to the Lees. And these law suits awards like all the others are so large they are laughable. But the Lees have no shame. When questioned by foreign journalists and world leaders, they say, it is the Asian way, whatever that is. According to him, in Asian way of thinking, their politicians should not be questioned in public, and if they do, they lose face and therefore the need to destroy them.

JB Jeyaretnam, Chee Soon Juan, Tang Laing Hong and a series of other victims are the ones who paid big. In Chee Soon Juan's case, when he was first sued, he sold his house and paid the Lees. After that since he did not have anymore money, the judgment awards were merely stacking up and had just become book entries while he was meanwhile bankrupted for not paying and effectively barred from formal politics. In his case too the total judgment awards amount to more than a million. The extortion racket only worked partially in his case, since he did not have a million dollars. But the other equally important purpose was served, he was politically disqualified from standing in elections.

Tang Liang Hong was the other prominent victim. A prominent millionaire lawyer, he had the temerity during the elections of 1997 to correctly reveal the fact that the Lee family was corrupt because they unfairly took advantage of their positions by receiving discounts for the purchase of condominiums for their entire family from the developers of Jade Mansions, a condominium developer. For this, the Lee family used the services of a thoroughly corrupt judge, Paneer Selvam, to order the seizure of several houses belonging to Tang and the money paid over to the Lees. Tang himself fled to Australia for his life where he lives in exile, bankrupted and impoverished, thanks to the Lees. As for the Lees, this law suit turned out to be highly lucrative in their extortion racket business. The takings turned out to be in excess of $5 million.

In my case, the extortion racket didn't work. In 1990, I was fined $8,000.00 for contempt of court merely for saying that the Subordinate Court judiciary selection process should be changed to make it more independent. Since I was at the time within the island, I paid it.

After they found me guilty of professional misconduct in 1991 merely for demanding an explanation from the Attorney General of Singapore about JB Jeyaretnam, I decided to leave the island. In 1992 after I was already in the US they sent me a bill for $130,000.00 which they claimed as their attorney costs in prosecuting the law disciplinary proceedings. Since I was already in the US, I did not pay.

Till now they have not done anything to attempt the recovery of the award. The lesson appears to be that they would only flex their muscles against any victim within the island. Once that victim leaves, they leave him alone obviously because you simply cannot bully someone who is not there to be bullied by your Kangaroo courts.

This extortion racket which the Lees use has so far tuned out to be the most effective method to silence dissent.

Firstly unlike actually murdering your dissenters, which would result in much greater political backlash in the international community, bankrupting and impoverishing them achieves the same purpose without the bad baggage that comes with murders and assassinations and it not only achieves the same purpose of destroying your opposition, it also enriches you in the millions.

A few JB Jeyartenams and Tang Liang Hongs would be enough to secure your retirement in the French Rivera with several sea side mansions to your name for any ordinary man. For the Lees who already pay themselves several millions a year which they call a salary, this extortion racket payout is only the icing on the cake.

Why do the people of Singapore put up with this, only God knows. But as long as they do put up with it, these bullies would continue targeting their victims for millions whenever it suits them.

Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
A Singaporean in Exile
Fremont, California USA
Tel: 510 491 8525
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/singapore.dissident