JOHOR BARU, March 6 ― The Johor Council of Royal Court has condemned a recent article from a Singaporean news portal for linking crown prince Tunku Ismail Ibrahim with a political issue.

The council’s president Datuk Abdul Rahim Ramli said the news portal had manipulated quotes attributed to the Tunku Mahkota Johor on the recent remarks by minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz against billionaire tycoon Robert Kuok.

"I strongly condemn the action of Singapore's The Independent of using and manipulating Tunku Ismail’s statement on a political issue between Nazri and Kuok.

"Tunku Ismail has never made any statement on the issue. I request everyone to stop linking His Majesty Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar and Tunku Ismail with political issues,” he said in a statement.

The statement was posted on the Johor Darul Ta’zim football club’s Facebook page, the Johor Southern Tigers, last night.

Abdul Rahim added that Johor royal family’s legal team, as well as the Johor police chief Datuk Mohd Khalil Kader Mohd will look into the matter.

"I would like to emphasise that all statements made by HM Sultan of Johor and HRH Crown Prince of Johor are only released through The Royal Johor (Royal Press Office) official page, JOHOR Southern Tigers official page and The Star newspaper. If there are any statements from sources other than what I have mentioned, such statements are not true at all,” he said.

The article on Singapore’s The Independent has since been retracted by the organisation citing that it failed to rise to their standards of argument and editorial treatment.

This was not the first time that the portal had to remove and apologised for their articles that were related to Johor.

In September last year, the Singapore news portal replaced an article with a brief apology, after earlier alleging slow response and withholding of treatment by Johor medical authorities on a Singaporean who had met with an accident in Johor Baru.