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Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Law following concerns over individuals using shell companies with negligible capital to lease residential homes and evade rental liabilities (a) whether the Ministry will consider legislative measures to hold directors personally liable or mandate personal guarantees for corporate residential tenancies; and (b) what legal safeguards will prevent corporate structures from being exploited to delay eviction and property recovery.

Mr Fadli Fawzi asked the Minister for Law whether the Government will consider introducing legislative measures to afford greater protection to landlords against tenants who enter into tenancy agreements with no intention of paying rent.

Mr Speaker: Order. Questions for Oral Answer.

Before I call on the Members for Question No 1, I wish to highlight to Members that the Parliamentary Question may be related to a case Noranth Ventures Pte Ltd v Loo Kin Ben which may be pending before the Courts. I have allowed the question to stand on today's Order Paper and have allowed other related questions because I am satisfied that it does not require answers that venture into legal issues before the Courts nor impinge on the mutual respect and forbearance maintained between the House and the Judiciary.

I would like to therefore advise Members to exercise caution in making any statement or asking any supplementary questions discussing or reflecting the details of the case, as it could have the potential to concern matters that are sub judice or may prejudice the legal proceedings and the interests of the parties to the matter. Following Standing Order 21(1)(h), I will rule such statements and supplementary questions out of order.

Mr Yip Hon Weng.

Mr Yip Hon Weng (Yio Chu Kang): Question No 1.

The Senior Minister of State for Law (Mr Murali Pillai) (for the Minister for Law): Mr Speaker, Sir, may I have your permission to answer Question Nos 1 and 2 in today's Order Paper together?

Mr Speaker: Please proceed.

Mr Murali Pillai: Obliged, Sir. My response will also address the related Parliamentary Question filed by the hon Member Mr Louis Chua for the Sitting on 3 November 2026, as well the Parliamentary Question for written answer filed by the hon Member Dr Choo Pei Ling for today's Sitting.

Sir, the Members' questions follow the District Court's decision in Noranth Ventures Pte Ltd v Loo Kin Ben dated 7 October 2026. As court proceedings are ongoing, I will confine my comments on the case to what is in the judgment and then set out what the authorities are doing.

In that case, a company leased a house from an elderly couple for $7,500 a month. It paid one month's rent and half the deposit, then stopped paying. One of its directors, Mr Anthony Thomas Price, and his family continued to live in the house. When the landlords tried to take back their property, the company applied to the Court to stop them.

The Court dismissed the company's application as a plain abuse of process. It ordered the company to give up possession and pay the rental arrears, double rent and costs. The Court also found that Mr Price had devised a deliberate scheme to rent the house with no intention of paying rent and that he had followed a similar pattern in other tenancies.

Following the Court's decision, the Police reviewed the findings and in consultation with the Attorney-General's Chambers, assessed that there was basis to commence investigations against Mr Price for cheating under section 420 of the Penal Code. This offence is punishable with imprisonment of up to 10 years, and a fine or caning or both.

The Official Receiver is also investigating possible fraudulent trading and wrongful trading offences; and the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) is also looking into potential breaches of the Companies Act by the relevant entities and individuals.

As investigations are ongoing, I will not say more. Nothing I have said should be taken as a view on whether an offence has been committed.

Let me now turn to the broader issues. Many companies lease residential properties for legitimate reasons, for example, to house employees posted to Singapore. When a company signs a lease, the company is liable for the rent, and not its directors or shareholders. It is the company that is liable for the commercial obligations entered into. This is a fundamental principle of company law and it facilitates the conduct of business.

However, the law does not allow companies to be used as a cover for fraud, or allow the individuals who set up the companies to evade responsibilities. Besides possible criminal penalties, those involved can be made personally responsible for the company's debts, for example, where the Court finds fraudulent or wrongful trading. The Court can disregard the corporate form where it is abused for an improper purpose. This is the law today.

So, to the hon Member Mr Yip's question, the law already provides safeguards against the abuse of corporate structures and allows directors to be held personally liable in appropriate circumstances.

Mr Yip also asked whether the Government will consider mandating personal guarantees for corporate residential tenancies. Landlords are already free to require personal guarantees from directors or other individuals before leasing their properties to companies, if they wish. They can decide whether to do so, based on their own assessment of risks of each tenancy.

A blanket mandatory rule would take away this flexibility. It would restrict the genuine arrangements that landlords and tenants can enter into and impose unnecessary burdens on legitimate transactions. At the same time, imposing such a requirement might not stop someone determined to cheat, who could appoint a director with no assets, to give the guarantee.

All commercial transactions involve some level of risk. So, we encourage landlords to conduct due diligence before entering into a tenancy. And there are resources to help them. The Council for Estate Agencies (CEA) publishes checklists for residential rental transactions on its website. The checklist for renting to a corporate tenant includes verifying the company's registration details with ACRA.

Individuals – both landlords and tenants – may wish to go through the relevant checklists, with their property agent if they have one, before entering into a tenancy.

In private residential rental transactions, CEA also requires property agents to verify the identities of prospective tenants and occupiers. For corporate tenants, agents must verify the company's legal existence and understand its ownership structure.

Depending on their assessment of the risks involved, landlords can seek a guarantee, a banker's guarantee or a larger deposit.

The hon Member Mr Louis Chua asked for data on claims for unpaid rent against corporate tenants in the past five years and on unrecovered judgment debts. The Courts do not track data at this level of detail, or on whether judgment sums are recovered. But the data from the Small Claims Tribunals' filing system gives a rough sense of the numbers.

Each year from 2021 to 2025, between about 1,100 and 1,840 claims relating to residential leases were filed in the Small Claims Tribunals. Of these, between 14 and 40 claims a year, or about 1% to 2%, involved cases where the claimant indicated “rental arrears”, and the respondent party was a company or other entity.

These figures are approximate. They rely on how claimants describe their own claims and the filing system does not record whether the respondent was the landlord or the tenant.

Larger claims are filed in the civil courts, whose filing system does not record whether a claim involves unpaid rent.

The hon Member Dr Choo Pei Ling asked whether the Government will review legislation to expedite legal recourse and repossession for landlords. Simplified processes already exist. For residential leases of up to two years, the Small Claims Tribunals can order payment of rental arrears as well as vacant possession, if the claim is within the small claims limit. In the Courts, a landlord with a clear case can also obtain an order for vacant possession without a full trial, as the landlords did in this case, and which the Court granted.

Mr Chua also suggested expedited possession procedures where rent is unpaid for a prescribed period. It is unclear what additional procedures the hon Member is proposing for such cases. If he is suggesting that possession of the property should be the default outcome, or even automatic whenever rent is unpaid for a prescribed period, I would think that this may be unfair to tenants.

We need to be careful. While a possession order allows a landlord to recover his or her property, it also takes away a home from the tenant and his or her family. Not every tenant who falls behind is acting in bad faith. Some face real hardship and others dispute in good faith that rent is owed. Indeed, the hon Member may recall making the call for more rental housing options and tenure security for Singaporeans, including just in August this year.

While the plight of the elderly landlords in this case deserves our sympathy, the hon Member Mr Chua I trust would agree with me, that the Government must be responsible and strike a coherent balance in the law. We cannot just go where the wind goes.

The hon Member Mr Fadli Fawzi also asked whether additional legislation is needed to protect landlords against tenants who have no intention of paying rent. We share his concern about landlords being taken advantage of. Our laws already deal with dishonest conduct and as I mentioned, the authorities are looking into the case that I described.

But the hon Member is suggesting that the Government should go further, with additional legislation. The difficulty is this: how would the Government determine upfront which tenants genuinely intend to pay, and which do not? Perhaps the Member could elaborate on what additional legislative measures he has in mind and to whom these should apply.

In this regard, on a point of information I would like to highlight, the Distress Act is already in our books. Under the Distress Act, the landlord can go to the Court without notice to claim for arrears in rent for subsisting tenancies, and the Court would be able to issue a writ of distress to distrain properties of the tenant. And with the distraining of the assets, it can be subsequently sold as well. So, you have expedited proceedings for recovery of arrears in rent.

Just a few weeks ago, Mr Fadli's colleague, the hon Member Assoc Prof Jamus Lim, proposed protecting tenants by capping rent increases by landlords, and introducing statutory renewal rights for food and beverage (F&B) tenants – essentially, to give additional safeguards to tenants and make it harder for landlords to end leases. Now, Mr Fadli is asking the Government to make it easier for landlords to take action against tenants.

The burden on us, on this side of the House, in Government, is to go beyond expressing sympathies to these two groups of people or entities who, if you look at it, are counterparties to the same transaction, and see that whatever policies we implement in favour of one, would not unduly burden the other. So, our approach in Government is to focus on whether the system works as a whole, allowing for genuine commercial transactions to be carried out but also guarding against cheating and fraud, as it does now.

We will continue to regularly review the law and make assessments as to whether any adjustments might be needed.

Mr Speaker: Mr Yip Hon Weng.

Mr Yip Hon Weng: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Senior Minister of State for his response. My supplementary question is really on who bears the cost of delays on the liabilities? When the corporate tenant seeks to prevent repossession after rent is unpaid, will the Ministry consider requiring the undisputed rent or a reasonable occupation charge to be paid in Court while proceedings continue, so that access to justice is preserved without placing the entire financial burden on the homemaker?

Mr Murali Pillai: Sir, currently, under the Civil Law Act, the landlord can already ask for double rent. Meaning rent from the period where the tenant is supposed to hand over the property, to such time that he actually hands over the property to the landlord. To some extent, it addresses the issue of the cost of delay.

Beyond that, the Court has its own processes to make sure that there is no abuse. And where the cases are straightforward, it can expedite its process to make sure that judgment is entered without unreasonable delay.

Mr Speaker: Mr Fadli Fawzi.

Mr Fadli Fawzi (Aljunied): Thank you. Firstly, I would just like to make the point between myself and Assoc Prof Jamus that protecting both law-abiding tenants and landlords is a consistent position, and it is not contradictory.

As for the additional legislative measures that we would want to suggest, I have one supplementary question. Does the Senior Minister of State consider it to be in the public interest to ban shell companies with negligible capital or recoverable assets from being used to obtain residential tenancies?

Mr Murali Pillai: Sir, in response to the hon Member Mr Fadli, I accept that, as far as the positions taken by him and the hon Member Assoc Prof Jamus Lim are concerned in terms of protecting the tenant from unduly higher rent and also in asking for some form of protection for the landlords against tenants who abuse their position, on the surface of it, it is not contradictory, but the point I am making is a bit deeper than that.

The point that I am making is that, while we may have sympathies for these groups of people who are hard done by, when we implement policies, we have to make sure that whatever policy we implement does not unwittingly or otherwise land the other party in a harder place. And that is the point that I am making.

So, for example, in this case, we have sympathies for the landlords. But the hon Member, as a lawyer, would know that there is this maxim, "Hard facts make bad law"; and as Government, we always have to deal with hard facts. The point is that when we are enunciating policies, we have to make sure that the principles upon which the policies are enunciated go beyond the particular facts of the case and deal with parties on an even-handed basis. So, that is really the point that I am making.

I see the hon Member raising his hand, Mr Speaker, Sir.

Mr Speaker: Senior Minister of State Murali, you might want to finish your response first.

Mr Murali Pillai: Very well. So, the other point the hon Member was making pertains to the use of shell companies. Sir, there are entirely reasonable grounds for a company to be formed with little capital. On its own, it may not necessarily mean that it is being used for nefarious purposes. For example, a shell company may be formed by an entrepreneur and he may well be funding the company through loans, which are easier to settle, as opposed to putting in capital.

So, there are reasons for setting up shell companies or companies with a lower amount of capital.

The broader point is that there is a system that exists that allows the landlords to do the due diligence. And I mentioned just now in my response, the CEA checklist. And the landlords may avail themselves to the checklist and in addition, also decide on what should be the conditions that they may want to impose – in the form of guarantees, in the form of larger deposits and so on.

Mr Speaker: Mr Fadli Fawzi.

Mr Fadli Fawzi: Thank you, Speaker. I would like to thank the Senior Minister of State for his response. Just to reiterate our position that protecting both law-abiding tenants and landlords is a consistent position. In fact, I would say that if we guard against gratuitous increase in rental rates, as my hon friend has suggested, we actually make it easier to ensure that tenants are able to make rent and therefore, allow landlords to have better claim on such rent.

Again, I thank the Senior Minister of State for his answer, but I think that if we prevent these companies with negligible capital or recoverable assets from being used to obtain residential tenancies, we prevent the moral hazard of having such companies being used as fronts for such agreements.

Mr Murali Pillai: Sir, I will just concentrate on the second part of the hon Member's response. Sir, I appreciate the point that he is making, but as I said just now, we have a regime in place now that makes people responsible for using companies, if the companies are being used for fraudulent trading or wrongful trading. We have an existing regime.

It is not clear from the hon Member's question why he feels that the current regime is unsatisfactory. And really, I go back to the point I made. As a Government, if we are looking at changing our policy, we first have to look at the broad framework now and what we want to achieve to the policy underpinnings now, and look at whatever changed circumstances and see whether it merits a change. But it must be dealt with on a principled basis, making sure that there are no blind spots or undesired outcomes for all stakeholders.

Mr Speaker: Mr Louis Chua.

Mr Chua Kheng Wee Louis (Sengkang): Thank you, Speaker. To the Senior Minister of State's point, I do agree that we do need to take a principled approach to this and respect the rights of both the landlords as well as the tenants. And I think that is also where, in my Parliamentary Question, I have focused quite specifically on the corporate tenancies, because based on the case that that we were citing, I think there is clearly a case of an abuse of process, as what the Judge has mentioned and the Senior Minister of State has also talked about.

This is where I also think that it is important. The Senior Minister of State talk about the CEA checklist. Actually, the CEA also provides a template residential tenancy agreement, which I believe most of the real estate agencies and real estate agents largely use. Within that agreement, there is also the right to re-enter the premises if certain conditions are met, such as if rent is in arrears. In fact, there is also a provision that allows for that to happen within, I think, there is a seven-day requirement.

So, there are various clauses put into contracts.

But as this case has shown, I think it is something which is prone to abuse. And my concern is whether or not there could be copycat cases arising, because people do realise that "Hey, if I do set up a shell company", notwithstanding the different individual circumstances, there may be a much more draggy legal process, more cumbersome process that may not be fair to both landlord and tenants. And so, an expedited process is what I was hoping to see – so, whether or not the Ministry can consider, so that we enable both the tenant and landlord to look into these repossession rules in a much more expeditious manner, to be fair to each individual case.

Mr Murali Pillai: Sir, I would like to thank the hon Member Mr Chua for agreeing with me that the Government should proceed on a principled basis when dealing with both tenants and landlords.

I appreciate the concern that the hon Member Mr Chua raised in relation to tenants who abuse their positions. But before dealing with that, he did highlight that the landlords may avail themselves of self-help remedies, like to peaceably re-enter the premises upon a trigger event. That is indeed something that can be utilised by landlords. But it is contextual as well – and the landlord may well be advised to look at the right that he has against this context and then, see wheher it is an opportunity to apply his right as reserved in the tenancy agreement.

Moving on to the point made by the hon Member about copycat cases, as far as this case is concerned, without expressing any views on how the investigation is going, the tenant is now under investigation for a very serious offence. So, I think that, on its own, is a signal that if they want to copy, they should tread with care.

Also, I had highlighted to the hon Member Mr Fadli Fawzi that there are actually expedited processes. Apart from the Small Claims Tribunals, you have the Distress Act which can be used for arrears of rent and can be invoked without notice. But if you want to go beyond that and say, order vacant possession on an expedited basis without notice, then I think we will be tilting the balance too much in favour of the landlord. And I think the hon Member, having made a case for tenants in the past, would appreciate that.