TikTok faces Singapore civil lawsuit from K Shanmugam over ‘false, baseless’ claims of extramarital affair

In a response to Today’s queries, TikTok’s lawyers said that they were not able to provide any comment on the matter.

TODAY has also reached out to Shanmugam’s legal team for their response.

On August 13 this year, a TikTok user with the username “@trusted.selller” allegedly uploaded a video which contained two images with the caption “Give him a defamation suit sister #minister #SG #viral #exwife”.

The images were of two screenshots, one of which appeared to be a Facebook page that responded to the search term “k shanmugam ex wife” which displayed an image of Shanmugam and his former wife.

The other was a screenshot of a forum post which contained allegations against Mr Shanmugam and were attributed to a “Former Mrs K Shanmugam”.

Two days later on August 15, another TikTok user with the username “@tharakhussin” purportedly uploaded a video containing an image of a Facebook post which featured an article published by celebscritic.com that included false and defamatory statements about Shanmugam.

While the video did not directly link back to the article, it displayed the headline in full, highlighting Shanmugam’s alleged extramarital affair with Member of Parliament Foo Mee Har.

He has since commenced separate proceedings against celebcritics.com over the published article and on September 15, the State Courts declared that the article contained false statements about Shanmugam, and the website was given a stop publication order.

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The third TikTok user referred to in Shanmugam’s affidavit went by the username “@thaddeusthomas81” and allegedly posted a video on August 17 which was purported to be about the minister with the caption “Clarifications and a look at who is the wife and alleged mistress”.

The video also contained an image, among others, of Foo Mee Har with the words “alleged affair with MP Foo Mee Har”.

In his affidavits, Shanmugam states that he has never engaged in such an affair.

In an effort to clarify the false allegations, Shanmugam took to Facebook where he said the allegations attributed to his former wife were, in fact, written by an impostor.

Shanmugam stated that his ex-wife had told him that she did not write them and that it was an impostor who made up the allegations.

The minister also clarified the allegations of his supposed affair with Foo were “false and baseless”.

His affidavits cited an August 18 article from the Mothership website as well, that detailed the apologies made by two individuals who published similar allegations.

Following the discovery of the videos, Shanmugam engaged lawyers to ask TikTok to take immediate action to disable access to the videos.

The request also asked for TikTok to provide the three users’ basic subscriber information.

However, TikTok responded in an email saying they were unable to disclose the information in the absence of a court order or other legal requirement.

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As Shanmugam has been unable to ascertain the identity or address of the three TikTok users, he has been unable to commence legal proceedings directly against them.

In his affidavits, Shanmugam stated the request for the documents and information would help lead him to the users’ identities and it is proportionate to require TikTok to produce them.

In using TikTok, the users have agreed not to publish any material that is deliberately designed to provoke or intended to harass, harm, hurt, distress, embarrass or upset people, but this has been breached by the three users when they uploaded the videos, he said.