BANGKOK, March 3 (AP): The brother of Singapore’s prime minister is accusing government authorities of persecuting his family after it emerged that he and his wife were under official investigation.
Lee Hsien Yang has long been at odds with his brother, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, over the will of their late father — Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew.
The family feud had largely died down until Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean told lawmakers that Lee Hsien Yang and his wife, Lee Suet Fern, were under investigation.
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In a written answer to parliament made public Thursday, he said the two were being investigated over allegations of providing false evidence in judicial proceedings regarding the will.
They are accused of lying under oath by a panel of three judges and a disciplinary tribunal, Teo Chee Hean wrote.
He told parliament the two had agreed to an interview with police but then later refused, which he said was “disappointing.”
“The police have advised them to reconsider participating in investigations, but they have since left Singapore and remain out of the country,” he wrote, according to a copy of the reply to parliament provided by his office on Friday.
In a post later on Facebook, Lee Hsien Yang said he and his sister, Lee Wei Ling, who had joined him in questioning the execution of the will, had long said they “feared the use of organs of the state against us and my family.”
“The persecution of my family by the Singapore authorities continues unabated,” he wrote.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but he has previously called his siblings’ accusations that he had misused government power against them “entirely baseless.”
Their father, Lee Kuan Yew, led Singapore with an iron grip for more than three decades and is credited with transforming the resource-poor island into a wealthy, bustling financial hub with low crime and almost zero corruption.
Following his death in 2015, the siblings clashed over a clause in his will indicating a family bungalow should be demolished rather than become some kind of a tourist attraction.
Lee Hsien Yang and his sister accused their brother, the prime minister, of instead preserving the house to “enhance his political capital” as a “visible symbol” of their father.
The prime minister has rejected the allegations and said he recused himself from the government’s decision-making process on deciding the house’s fate.
