Oral Answer by Senior Minister of State Murali Pillai on Shell Companies and Rental Liabilities
4 November 2026 Posted in Parliamentary speeches and responses
Names and Constituencies of Members of Parliament
Mr Chua Kheng Wee Louis (Member of Parliament for Sengkang GRC)
Mr Yip Hong Weng (Member of Parliament for Yio Chu Kang SMC)
Mr Fadli Fawzi (Member of Parliament for Aljunied GRC)
Dr Choo Pei Ling (Member of Parliament for Chua Chu Kang GRC)
Questions
Mr Chua Kheng Wee Louis: To ask the Minister for Law (a) in each of the past five years (i) how many residential tenancy claims for unpaid rent are filed where the tenant was a company and (ii) in how many of these cases the judgment sum remains unrecovered; (b) whether the Ministry will consider introducing expedited possession procedures for residential landlords where rent is unpaid for a prescribed period, particularly for corporate residential leases.(a) in each of the past five years (i) how many residential tenancy claims for unpaid rent are filed where the tenant was a company and (ii) in how many of these cases the judgment sum remains unrecovered;<p></p>
Mr Yip Hon Weng: To ask 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: To ask 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.
Dr Choo Pei Ling To ask the Minister for Law regarding tenants who use shell companies to evade rent and exploit legal processes to stall evictions, whether the Government will review legislation to expedite the legal recourse and repossession process for landlords.
Oral Answer by Senior Minister of State Murali Pillai:
1. Sir, the Members’ questions follow the District Court’s decision in Noranth Ventures Pte Ltd v Loo Kin Ben dated 7 October 2026. As the 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.
2. In that case –
(1) A company leased a house from an elderly couple for $7,500 a month.
(2) It paid one month’s rent, and half the deposit, then stopped paying.
(3) One of its directors, Mr Anthony Thomas Price, and his family continued to live in the house.
(4) When the landlords tried to take back their property, the company applied to the Court to stop them.
3. 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.
4. Following the Court’s decision, the Police reviewed the findings and in consultation with the Attorney-General’s Chambers, assessed that there was a 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.
5. The Official Receiver is also investigating possible fraudulent trading and wrongful trading offences; and the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority is also looking into potential breaches of the Companies Act by the relevant entities and individuals.
6. 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.
7. Let me now turn to the broader issues.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. So, to the Honorable 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.
11. Mr Yip also asked whether the Government will consider mandating personal guarantees for corporate residential tenancies.
(1) 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.
(2) 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.
12. All commercial transactions involve some level of risk. So we encourage landlords to conduct due diligence before entering into a tenancy. There are resources to help them.
(1) The Council for Estate Agencies, or CEA, publishes checklists for residential rental transactions on its website.
(2) The checklist for renting to a corporate tenant includes verifying the company’s registration details with ACRA.
(3) 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.
(4) 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.
(5) Depending on their assessment of the risks involved, landlords can seek a guarantee, a banker’s guarantee or a larger deposit.
13. The Honorable 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’ (SCT) filing system gives a rough sense of the numbers:
(1) Each year from 2021 to 2025, between about 1,100 and 1,840 claims relating to residential leases were filed in the SCT. Of these, between 14 and 40 claims a year, or about 1 to 2 per cent, involved cases where the claimant indicated “rental arrears” and the respondent party was a company or other entity.
(2) 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.
(3) Larger claims are filed in the civil courts, whose filing system does not record whether a claim involves unpaid rent.
14. The Honorable Member Dr Choo Pei Ling asked whether the Government will review legislation to expedite legal recourse and repossession for landlords.
15. Simplified processes already exist. For residential leases of up to two years, the SCT can order payment of rental arrears, as well as vacant possession, if the claim is within the small claims limit.
16. 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.
17. Mr Chua also suggested expedited possession procedures where rent is unpaid for a prescribed period.
18. It is unclear what additional procedures the Honorable 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.
(1) 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.
(2) Indeed, the Honorable 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 Honorable 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.
19. Mr Fadli Fawzi also asked whether additional legislation is needed to protect landlords against tenants who have no intention of paying rent.
20. 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.
21. But the 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.
22. 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.
23. Just a few weeks ago, Mr Fadli’s colleague, Associate Professor Jamus Lim, proposed protecting tenants by capping rent increases by landlords, and introducing statutory renewal rights for F&B tenants – essentially, to give additional safeguards to tenants and make it harder for landlords to end leases.
24. Now, Mr Fadli is asking the Government to make it easier for landlords to take action against tenants.
25. 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.
Last updated on 4 November 2026