SINGAPORE, July 2 — In a three-hour High Court hearing today, representatives from the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) argued for Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s nephew, Li Shengwu, to be convicted and fined S$15,000 over a long-running contempt of court case.

Li, an assistant economics professor at Harvard University, was not present. The 35-year-old has refused to take part in the legal proceedings since January this year.

In February, the court ordered him to return to Singapore to be cross-examined, after he did not answer various questions posed to him by the AGC on oath.

High Court judge Kannan Ramesh reserved his decision today and did not specify when he will release it.

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This development comes about a week after Li’s father and PM Lee’s younger brother, Lee Hsien Yang, announced that he had joined the opposition Progress Singapore Party.

On Nomination Day on Tuesday, Lee Hsien Yang ended days of heated speculation by saying he would not be contesting in the current General Election.

About the case

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The case arose over a friends-only Facebook post that Li made on July 15, 2017, in which he wrote that the Singapore Government was “very litigious” and has a “pliant court system”.

He was commenting on the dispute between his father, his aunt Lee Wei Ling, and his uncle, PM Lee, over the fate of the home of his grandfather, the late Lee Kuan Yew, at 38 Oxley Road.

Li had posted it while in Singapore. After he did not comply with requests by the AGC to apologise and delete the post, the AGC began legal proceedings against him for scandalising the judiciary.

In February this year, the High Court dismissed his two applications to set aside the various questions that the AGC had posed to him. These included how large his Facebook friends list was, who they were, and how many of them were reporters.

Written legal submissions on the applications were due a week before Li’s February hearing. However, he wrote on Facebook on Jan 22 that he would no longer take part in the legal proceedings.

The AGC said that to date, he has refused to answer its questions on oath or produce certain documents referred to in his defence affidavit filed on Sept 24 last year.

In his post, Li said his decision to refrain from future participation was due to the AGC’s actions in court.

In particular, he singled out the AGC’s application to strike out parts of his defence affidavit, such that they would not be considered during the trial.

The next day, the AGC said in response that parts of Mr Li’s defence affidavit had been struck out because it contained matters that were scandalous and irrelevant to the issues in the case.

The AGC also said that his decision to withdraw from the case was to avoid the prospect of answering questions under oath and disclosing information.

The High Court ruled to strike out parts of Li’s affidavit in November last year.

Neither Li nor the AGC specified the parts of his affidavit that had been removed.

Risk of republication ‘entire foreseeable’

Today, Deputy Chief Counsel Low Siew Ling told the court that the AGC sent Li four reminders through email and courier service from Feb 19 to March 23. He did not respond to any of them.

Low, who led a group of four AGC representatives, proceeded to argue several points to show that Li had scandalised the judiciary:

Far from being a private person not accustomed to the media spotlight, Li has given many interviews to “friendly foreign media” in his capacity as Lee Kuan Yew’s grandson.

The risk of his post being republished was “entirely foreseeable”. At the time, the Oxley Road saga was fresh in the public’s mind and his “inflammatory comments” meant the “potential for widespread dissemination is very clear”.

Li was “acutely aware” that his Facebook posts were “fully capable of generating headlines” as he was part of the Lee family.

The friends-only post remains up on Li’s page and the phrase “pliant court system” has been removed.

Low said that Li did publicly clarify or disclose what the amendment to his post was, something that was “telling because it shows he accepts the original post could carry a contemptuous meaning”.

“He has never publicly disavowed it… he clearly intends for the sting of the post to remain,” she added.

Any reasonable person reading the post would think that Singapore’s legal system was not robust and did not command public confidence, she said.

Low further told the court that an inference could be drawn as to Li’s Facebook friends list being large, given that an AGC officer, who “has no connection” to Li, already had 15 mutual friends with him.

Li had also sent his defence affidavit to several “selected” foreign media organisations in breach of the Supreme Court’s practice directions, as well as CNA after Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post published an article on the affidavit.

“He was clearly using the proceedings as a platform to launch collateral attacks for a political purpose. He also publicly disclosed on Facebook that he had filed his defence affidavit,” Low added.

Reiterating the AGC’s stance on why Li withdrew from legal proceedings, she alleged that Li knew answering the AGC’s questions on oath would “expose his lies”.

As the hearing wrapped up, Low argued for a default jail term of two weeks to be imposed if Li does not pay the fine.

The case has seen numerous twists and turns. Li previously appealed the High Court’s decision to allow the AGC to serve legal papers on him in the US.

The Court of Appeal ruled in April last year that the papers had been properly served. — TODAY