Singapore government rejects Li Shengwu’s snub of contempt case; cousin Li Hongyi says ‘leave me out of it’

Li says the Attorney General’s comments about him are ‘false and spurious’

Meanwhile, his cousin Li Hongyi said he does not want to be involved in the debacle, in comments made a day after Shengwu said he had unfriended him on Facebook

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Li Shengwu speaks at the 2015 state funeral of his grandfather, Lee Kuan Yew. Photo: Singapore Prime Minister's Office

Published: 2:58pm, 23 Jan 2020Updated: 11:29pm, 23 Jan 2020

Singapore’s Attorney General’s Chambers has hit back at the decision by a grandson of Lee Kuan Yew to no longer participate in a contempt of court case, saying his “contrived excuses” reflect what he thinks of his case.

“If [Li Shengwu] believes that his statement was not in contempt of the Singapore judiciary, he should continue to defend the proceedings,” said the AGC in a statement on its website on Thursday. “The fact that Mr Li has chosen not to, at this point, and has contrived excuses to explain his decision, shows what he really thinks.”

Li, a Harvard University assistant economics professor, had declared in a Facebook post on Wednesday that he would no longer participate in proceedings that began in August 2017.

He attributed this to a “broader pattern of unusual conduct” by the AGC, saying it had earlier sought to strike out parts of his defence affidavit.

This meant that part of his court filings would not be considered at the trial, and that the AGC also wanted those parts to be sealed in the court record and not made public, he claimed.