Iris Koh and husband ordered to pay HSA $12,000 in costs
Anti-vaccine group founder Iris Koh and her husband Raymond Ng were found to have abused court process and ordered to pay $12,000 in costs.
Koh, 48, and Ng, 51, had filed for a judicial review, seeking a mandatory order to make the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) investigate and, if necessary, prosecute entities using celebrities to advertise vaccination.
The Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) acted on behalf of HSA and filed to have the application struck out.
An AGC spokesman said this was because HSA had already investigated the matter, and Koh and Ng were seeking an academic or hypothetical interpretation of the law, which was an abuse of the court’s process.
On Sept 19, the court ruled it was an abuse of process, and that it was in the interest of justice to strike it out.
The judge also found the couple’s judicial review application disclosed no reasonable cause of action, and ordered them to pay HSA $10,000 for the striking-out application and another $2,000 for two other related applications.
In a post on Facebook after the hearing, Koh asked for support to cover the $12,000 in costs.
She said: “Despite this setback, we’ve learnt a great deal from this experience about the complexities of pursuing a judicial review. This knowledge will be invaluable as we consider future actions to uphold public rights.”
Her post was accompanied by a photo of herself and Ng.
They have multiple ongoing court cases, including several for defamation.
Koh and Ng have recently been posting on social media about suing several people, including former Nominated Member of Parliament Calvin Cheng.
In March, Ng posted on TikTok he had developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system for the sole purpose of suing people for defamation.
He posted on his website about suing thousands without lawyers with the AI system, saying it was like unleashing a legal whirlwind.
Koh, who has been named as a party alongside Ng in several of the defamation cases, is also facing an ongoing criminal case.
She is currently out on $30,000 bail, and faces 14 charges for offences including criminal conspiracy and harassment.
Koh, who founded anti-vaccine group Healing the Divide, allegedly told more than 3,700 of its chat group members to harass doctors at vaccination centres in 2021 during Singapore’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
She also allegedly told members to hinder the work of staff at the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Social and Family Development by flooding their hotlines with calls to demand they follow up on their cases.
Seven of her charges relate to alleged false representations made to MOH involving Covid-19 vaccination certificates.
She is accused of committing the offences with then general practitioner Jipson Quah, 36, and seven others on seven occasions between 2021 and 2022.
They had allegedly made false representations to MOH that those seven had been given the Sinopharm vaccine, when they had not, to obtain certificates of vaccination against Covid-19.
Quah, who has been temporarily suspended from practising medicine, faces 17 charges, while Chua has seven charges.
An Australian, who paid $6,000 to Quah and Chua to falsify vaccination records for himself and his wife, pleaded guilty to one charge of cheating in April 2023 and was sentenced to 16 weeks’ jail. This was reduced to 12 weeks on appeal.
Koh’s criminal case is expected to be heard in chambers on Oct 16.
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