The last will of Singapore founder Lee Kuan Yew was made in “deeply troubling circumstances” with a family member helping to draft it, his eldest son and the country’s Prime Minister alleged.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said late Thursday that Lee Suet Fern, the wife of his brother Lee Hsien Yang, had “re-inserted a demolition clause” in the last will before the elder Lee died in 2015. The clause directed a family home to be demolished instead of being turned into a museum or heritage site.
Mr. Lee claimed that his brother and sister-in-law, who led a team of lawyers at Stamford Law Corporation, now Morgan Lewis Stamford, arranged for the will to be altered in December 2013.
“Yet, the last will that LSF and her law firm prepared and got Mr. Lee to sign went beyond that,” he added. LSF refers to Lee Suet Fern.
The Prime Minister added that he has shared these suspicions with a government committee, which is in the process of “establishing what Mr. Lee Kuan Yew’s thinking and wishes were in relation to the house.”
The house, which was built on prime land in the city-state, appears to be the center of a feud that broke on Tuesday between the Prime Minister and his two younger siblings.
But the feud is laced with disturbing accusations of extralegal bullying and nepotism, compelling the prominent family’s second son, business executive Lee Hsien Yang, to leave Singapore “for the foreseeable future.”
A self-proclaimed authoritarian, 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.
