NHB error on collection date for LKY's items 'even more troubling': Hsien Yang

Yahoo News Singapore
A man walks past 38 Oxley Road, the home for Singapore’s late prime minister Lee Kuan Yew. (PHOTO: AFP)
A man walks past 38 Oxley Road, the home for Singapore’s late prime minister Lee Kuan Yew. (PHOTO: AFP)

The National Heritage Board’s (NHB) “clerical error” regarding the date on which some of the late Lee Kuan Yew’s items were collected is “even more troubling”, said Lee Hsien Yang in a Facebook post late on Thursday (23 June) night.

In an earlier post, Hsien Yang – who is the brother of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and son of former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew – had accused PM Lee’s wife, Ho Ching, of acting “under the auspices” of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) when she allegedly handed certain personal items that belonged to the late Lee over to the NHB on 6 February 2015.

The post included a photo of a list of six items, five of which were shown to have been handed over on the aforementioned date. In each instance, the items’ lender/source was cited as the PMO, with Ho as the point of contact.

In response to media queries on Hsien Yang’s earlier post, the NHB clarified that the actual collection date of the items was 6 April 2015 and that it was a “clerical error” that had led to the wrong date being recorded in the cited list.

“NHB has a receipt for the items on loan from PMO dated Apr 6, 2015,” an NHB spokesperson said in a Channel NewsAsia report. “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.”

Noting in his later post that the NHB’s admission was “even more troubling”, Hsien Yang also reiterated his criticism of Ho’s alleged involvement in the handing over of the late Lee’s items.

“By LKY’s will, the estate’s residual items, such as personal documents, fall under the absolute discretion of the executors Wei Ling and myself. Unapproved removal of these items, even by a beneficiary, constitutes both theft and intermeddling,” he said, referring to his sister Lee Wei Ling, who has taken his side in the ongoing dispute with their elder brother over the fate of their father’s Oxley Road home.

“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,” Hsien Yang added.

PM Lee’s younger siblings have accused him of abusing his power in trying to prevent the house from being demolished, as per the late Lee’s final will.

The prime minister apologised to Singaporeans on Monday (19 June) for the family feud that has “disturbed and confused” Singaporeans and said he would be making a Ministerial Statement in Parliament on 3 July to refute the allegations against him.

Yahoo Singapore has reached out to the PMO and NHB for comment.

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