Lee Hsien Yang has accused his sister-in-law Ho Ching of either stealing documents or abusing her position as the prime minister’s wife to obtain them.
Those documents belonged to the late Lee Kuan Yew.
Said Lee Hsien Yang in his latest Leekileaks post:
“LKY was admitted gravely ill into the ICU on Feb 5, 2015. The next day, Ho Ching helped herself to a number of LKY’s papers. These she handed to the NHB (ostensibly on loan) under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Office. She had no business doing this when LKY was in ICU and it is deeply troubling that someone can represent the PMO despite holding no official position.”
Lee Hsien Yang included this picture in his Leekileak, saying that Ho Ching had abused her position as the PM’s wife.
Ho Ching does not hold any post in the government or civil service.
It shows Ho Ching being the “contact person” for the Prime Minister’s Office, when the items were collected between 27 March 2015 and 6 Feb 2015 by a National Heritage Board representative.
The papers mentioned in the post included a letter and a telegram dating back to the 1950s.
There was also this memo from the director of posts dated Feb 11, 1952, which told postal workers that the British government had no objection to Mr Lee Kuan Yew representing them in their dispute.
Channel NewsAsia later pointed out that Ho Ching was overseas at the time accompanying PM Lee Hsien Loong on a week-long official visit to Germany and Spain, and returned to Singapore on 7 Feb 2015.
Lee Hsien Yang then asked to know who was the person from the PMO Ho Ching had instructed to take the documents.
But the latest statement by the National Heritage Board has got Lee Hsien Yang claiming that if Ho Ching hadn’t abused her power to obtain the documents, then she must be a thief.
The NHB said that the list showed items on loan from the Prime Minister’s Office to the NHB.
IT added that “items numbered 2 to 5, the items were received on Apr 6, 2015 instead of Feb 6, 2015 as indicated” and that this was a “clerical error”.
“NHB has a receipt for the items on loan from PMO dated Apr 6, 2015,” an NHB spokesperson said. “All the items were loaned to NHB after the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew passed away, to be displayed at the In Memoriam: Lee Kuan Yew exhibition held at the National Museum of Singapore.”
Lee Hsien Yang said that NHB’s statement is “even more troubling”.
He said that according to his late father’s will, the estate’s “residual items”, such as personal documents, fall under the “absolute discretion” of the executors – his sister Dr Lee Wei Ling and himself.
As such, he claimed that “unapproved removal of these items, even by a beneficiary, constitutes both theft and intermeddling.”
“Ho Ching is not an executor or a beneficiary to our father’s estate. We also still do not understand how she is a proper contact representative for the PMO.”
Lee Hsien Yang and Dr Lee are locked in a dispute over Lee Kuan Yew’s 38 Oxley Road house.
They have also accused PM Lee of abusing his power as prime minister, and using the “organs of the state” against them.
PM Lee has denied all allegations so far, and says he will speak more on the issue in a ministerial statement in parliament on 3 Jul.
