On Thursday (Apr 21), the main editor of the now-defunct website The Online Citizen (TOC) was sentenced to three weeks in prison for criminal defamation.
Terry Xu Yuanchen, 39, was convicted in November of defaming members of Singapore's Cabinet by approving the release of a letter on Sep 4, 2018 alleging "high-level corruption."
Daniel De Costa Augustin, 38, the letter's author, was sentenced to three months and three weeks in prison. On May 4, he will begin serving his sentence.
De Costa was convicted of a similar allegation of criminal defamation, as well as a second charge of unauthorized access to an email account that did not belong to him and was used to submit the article.
On September 4, 2018, De Costa wrote an email to theonlinecitizen@gmail.com from a Chinatown Internet cafe, captioned "PAP MP apologizes to SDP." He intended for it to be published on the TOC website.
On the same day, Xu allowed the publishing of an email provided to it by Willy Sum, headlined "The Takeaway From Seah Kian Ping's Facebook Post." Mr Seah Kian Peng's name was spelled incorrectly.
The defamatory essay stated: "Since the loss of founding father Lee Kuan Yew, we have witnessed several policy and international missteps, Constitutional interference, high-level corruption, and an apparent lack of respect from foreign powers."
De Costa sent the paper to TOC under the name Willy Sum using an email account belonging to Mr Sim Wee Lee.
Mr Sim previously testified that he met De Costa in 2005 or 2006 while walking his dogs and the two became friends. He granted De Costa access to his email account in order to assist him in resolving his bankruptcy and housing issues.
He then discovered that De Costa had emailed government officials criticizing him without his authorization.
Both Xu and De Costa faced charges last year and were convicted in November 2021.
Xu and De Costa faced up to two years in prison and a fine for criminal defamation. De Costa could potentially have been sentenced to up to two years in prison, a fine of up to S$5,000, or both for unauthorized computer access.
The TOC website, which was launched in 2006, was taken offline in September of last year after the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) suspended its class license for persistently failing to comply with its legal responsibility to disclose all funding sources.
Authorities later revoked the license.
The High Court rejected a website's request in December to reverse IMDA's orders to shut down its Chinese-language website and social media accounts.
Comments