SPH Media circulation scandal

The SPH Media circulation scandal refers to the 2022–2023 discovery that SPH Media had overstated the daily circulation figures of its newspapers, including The Straits Times, for a period that began while the media business was still under the listed Singapore Press Holdings Limited (SPH). The overstatement was uncovered during an internal review following SPH Media Trust's (SMT) formation in December 2021, became public in January 2023 after several senior executives left the organisation, and was confirmed in a forensic report by SMT's own Audit and Risk Committee (ARC) in June 2023, which found daily circulation had been overstated by around 82,600 copies — roughly 10% of the reported total. A police report was filed on the ARC's recommendation; Singapore Police closed the investigation in April 2026 with no criminal charges against any individual examined. The scandal did not affect the Singapore Government's commitment to fund SMT with up to S$900 million over five years, a decision Parliament had made in February 2022 before the discrepancies came to light.

Background

SPH's media business was restructured out of the listed SPH into SMT, a not-for-profit Company Limited by Guarantee, incorporated on 19 July 2021.

Main article: SPH Media Trust

In February 2022, the Government committed to fund SMT's digital transformation with up to S$180 million annually over five years — up to S$900 million in total — a figure the Minister for Communications and Information, Josephine Teo, stated explicitly in Parliament. As part of the restructuring, SMT began reviewing the data and processes it had inherited from SPH, including circulation reporting.

Discovery

Internal review and executive departures

SMT's internal review covered the period from September 2020 to March 2022 — spanning both the final months under listed SPH and SMT's own early period. The review found inconsistencies including lapsed contracts still being counted as circulation, printed copies counted and then destroyed, double-counted subscriptions, and a project account used to purchase what SMT itself described as "fictitious circulation". Around 23 December 2022, three senior SMT executives, collectively holding more than five decades of industry experience, were separated from the organisation over the discrepancies.

Public disclosure

The matter first became public when Wake Up Singapore reported the executive departures on 8 January 2023, after SMT did not respond to the outlet's queries in the preceding days. SMT subsequently confirmed to The Straits Times that staff involved "had been taken to task, or had left the organisation," and that it had "immediately taken steps to strengthen processes," without naming those involved. SMT disclosed that the discrepancy amounted to between 85,000 and 95,000 average daily copies across all titles — 10 to 12% of reported daily average circulation — and shared its internal report with the Government on 9 January 2023.

SMT's public statement and preliminary findings (20 January 2023)

On 20 January 2023, SMT issued its first public statement on the matter, confirming that an independent Big Four advisory firm had been commissioned to assist with the internal review, and that four staff had left the company while three others were issued warning letters over actions taken in late December 2022. The statement gave a preliminary breakdown of the roughly 90,000-copy overstatement: approximately 49,000 average daily copies recorded as circulation but not distributed (mostly digital), 5,000 copies recorded after contracts had lapsed, 17,000 copies attributed to a failure to check reported numbers against actual system usage, and a possible discrepancy of 19,000 copies linked to a barter arrangement with another publisher. These preliminary figures were later superseded by the ARC's final findings in June 2023 (see below), which arrived at a somewhat different total and breakdown following the fuller forensic investigation.

SMT's Board tasked its Audit and Risk Committee — chaired by Max Loh (former Managing Partner, EY ASEAN & Singapore), with members Lim Mei (Co-Head of Corporate Mergers and Acquisitions, Allen & Gledhill) and Philip Lee (Vice-Chairman of Global Banking for Southeast Asia, HSBC Singapore) — with investigating the matter fully and reporting conclusions and recommendations to the Board. The ARC's terms of reference directed it to assess whether the overstatement, as identified in a preliminary Deloitte investigation report dated 2 November 2022 and an SPH Media internal Audit & Risk Division report, contravened Singapore law, covering the review period of 1 September 2020 to 31 March 2022.

Whistleblower allegation

On 18 January 2023, The Online Citizen reported a claim from an anonymous whistleblower, described as part of a group with sources within SMT's revenue and advertising arm, alleging that SMT's CEO, Teo Lay Lim, told staff at a town hall meeting — held only for the marketing, advertising and circulation departments, not the wider organisation — to "let the matter rest" regarding the departed executives, and expressed concern that the matter could come to the attention of MCI and be raised in Parliament. The whistleblower further suggested that circulation-figure practices predating September 2020 may have been known to past management and could have misled SPH shareholders. This account is uncorroborated beyond the anonymous source; TOC stated it had sought comment from SPH Media's senior management but had not received a reply at time of publication.

The same report noted a countervailing account from Leslie Fong, a former Straits Times editor and former SPH marketing chief, who stated that counting both a print and a digital subscription for the same household as two separate copies, and counting bulk copies distributed for free to organisations such as shopping malls, are longstanding practices accepted under Audit Bureau of Circulations rules and endorsed by successive SPH boards — describing this as "legitimate 'double counting', not cheating or inflating."

Call for a Commission of Inquiry

Following the Wake Up Singapore report, opposition party People's Voice, through its leader Lim Tean, called for the President to convene a Commission of Inquiry, arguing the scale of public funding committed to SMT (S$900 million over five years) warranted independent scrutiny beyond an internal review. Lim Tean argued the allegations, if accurate, undercut earlier parliamentary assurances about SMT's reach and readership. No Commission of Inquiry was convened; the matter instead proceeded through SMT's own Audit and Risk Committee and subsequent parliamentary questioning.

Parliamentary scrutiny (February 2023)

On 6 February 2023, the Minister for Communications and Information, Josephine Teo, addressed 18 separate Parliamentary Questions on the matter in a single sitting. She stated that because the Government's funding relationship with SMT only began in FY2022 and no funds had yet been disbursed, the discrepancies — which predated that relationship — had no bearing on public funds. She confirmed that MCI's own basis for funding SMT rested on reach and readership metrics rather than circulation, and that the reasons for supporting SMT's transformation remained valid regardless of the review's findings. Multiple MPs, including Gerald Giam, Pritam Singh, and Non-Constituency Member Leong Mun Wai, pressed on whether the 2021 circulation figures cited in Iswaran's original ministerial statement were reliable; Teo stated those figures, covering 2017–2020, fell outside the period under SMT's review and so could not be confirmed either way.

Audit and Risk Committee findings (June 2023)

The ARC engaged law firm Allen & Gledhill (A&G) as legal advisor; A&G in turn appointed Deloitte to conduct forensic discovery and analysis of the underlying data. A&G reported its findings to the Committee on 15 June 2023, and the Committee's own report followed the next day.

Mechanisms of overstatement

The report identified several distinct practices, spanning both the pre-transfer period under listed SPH and the post-transfer period under SMT, that contributed to the overstatement:

• Bulk copies and the NIE Fund — SPH operated a "Newspapers in Education" (NIE) Fund, dating back to as early as 2000, originally intended to pay for distributing newspaper samples to students, needy families, halfway houses and charities at heavily discounted rates. The Fund was used to purchase "NIE Bulk Copies" to shore up circulation numbers and meet the Circulation Division's KPI targets, with the largest additions typically made in August each year to inflate the figures used in the annual report. Monies from several revenue sources — including education-deal packages, a third-party contract, and school workshops — were booked into the Fund as liabilities rather than recognised as revenue, which the report found inconsistent with Singapore Financial Reporting Standard 115. The Fund was closed in May 2022 after the overstatement was discovered; its S$1.8 million surplus was recognised as part of the gain from the media business's transfer to SPH Media Group. The aggregate sum charged out from the Fund for Bulk Copies during the review period was approximately S$748,000.
• School copies — Under a Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) deal, SPH continued reporting Straits Times print copies as being supplied to secondary schools even after ceasing to print or deliver them from FY2020 onwards at the schools' own request. Separately, "reading corner" copies sponsored for tertiary institutions continued to be printed and counted during COVID-19 school closures ("temporary stops"), despite not being distributed.
• "Avatar" copies — Internal shorthand, understood by interviewees to mean "throw away," for NIE Bulk Copies and reading-corner copies that were never distributed but were instead sent to a warehouse or print centre and disposed of (typically shredded), sometimes redirected to halfway houses or charities in case of audit checks. Knowledge of this practice was reported to be confined to the Circulation Division, with no evidence the SPH board was aware of it.
• The "X" barter deal — A long-running barter arrangement, dating to 2013, under which a foreign publisher ("X") provided SPH with digital subscriptions to its own paper in exchange for 15,000 Straits Times and Business Times digital subscriptions, with no cash changing hands. The report found negligible evidence that the digital access codes on SPH's side were ever distributed or activated, and identified unexplained changes to the deal's terms over time as red flags suggesting it may have become "a questionable arrangement entered into for the sole purpose of inflating circulation numbers and revenue," rather than a genuine exchange. The deal lapsed in December 2022 and was not renewed.
• The "Y" deal — A separate licensing arrangement granting a foreign printer the right to print and distribute 5,000 daily Straits Times copies. These 5,000 copies continued to be counted in SPH's reported circulation even after actual printing under the deal stopped in February 2021; the counterparty was later charged only a nominal fee specifically to allow the copies to keep being reported.
• Airline copies — An airline paid SPH a fixed monthly fee for unlimited digital downloads of SPH titles. SPH reported a fixed daily figure of roughly 2,500 copies in its circulation numbers regardless of actual usage, even though the airline could and did track real download counts, which the report found were significantly lower — in the range of 110 to 220 daily copies during the review period.
• Agency subscriptions — A system constraint led to each digital coupon pass sold through two subscription agencies being recorded twice — once at full price and once at a 100% discount — resulting in double-counted digital circulation.
• All-in-One package copies — Some print-plus-digital subscribers asked not to receive their print copies while continuing to pay the package price; SPH kept printing (and disposing of) these copies while still counting them in circulation.

Findings and figures

The Committee's best estimate of the overstatement, based on August 2021 data, was approximately 82,600 average daily copies — around 10% of the reported total — broken down as: 49,000 copies via the NIE Fund bulk-copy practice; 5,000 copies under the Y Deal; 13,600 copies across school, airline, agency and All-in-One arrangements combined (1,900 School, 2,300 Airline, 9,000 Agency, 400 All-in-One); and 15,000 copies under the X Barter Deal. This figure differs from — and supersedes — the roughly 90,000-copy preliminary estimate SMT had disclosed in January 2023, reflecting the fuller forensic review.

On the financial impact: for the financial year ended 31 August 2021, the NIE Fund practices resulted in an understatement of profits of approximately S$110,000; separately, X Barter Deal revenue and expenses of about S$1.2 million for that year, and approximately S$830,000 for the year ended 31 August 2022, were found to have been recorded despite no genuine transaction — with no net profit-and-loss impact in either case, since the equal and opposite entries offset each other. The Committee concluded the accounting impact was not material to SPH Media Group's FY2022 financial statements taken as a whole.

The report found the individuals directly responsible for the overstatement were concentrated in the Circulation Division, with no evidence that the SPH board or wider senior management (beyond specific individuals whose identities were redacted in the published report) were involved. Employees who remained with the company were found by A&G to have been "acting under the instructions of their superiors" and to have "operated under the mistaken belief that the practices directed by these superiors were accepted practices in SPH." The journalism and editorial departments were explicitly cleared of any involvement.

Recommendations and police report

A&G advised that the matters identified potentially constituted certain offences, and recommended a police report be filed so that the matter could be investigated further; the Committee concurred. Separately, A&G assessed that the disciplinary actions already taken against the departed and warned employees were "reasonably justified in the circumstances." The Committee recommended that SPH Media Group benchmark its circulation/readership reporting methodology against internationally accepted standards, have it audited by an independent third party, and review it regularly; and more broadly, that the organisation evaluate its risk culture and strengthen its internal controls, including segregation of duties, transaction authorisation, and documentation practices. SPH Media filed the police report on 21 June 2023. ARC chair Max Loh stated the recommendation was not directed at any specific individual but reflected the investigation's overall findings, and urged the public to allow the police process to proceed without interference.

Government funding response

Throughout the scandal, MCI maintained that the underlying case for funding SMT — the collapse of print advertising revenue and the public-interest value of trusted local journalism — was independent of the circulation findings, and did not revise the committed S$900 million. The Ministry noted that the first tranche of funding was disbursed in March 2023, after the events under review but before the ARC's June 2023 report was completed. Separately, SMT chief executive Teo Lay Lim assured advertisers that advertising packages were based on independent third-party reach and readership research rather than the disputed circulation figures.

Police investigation and closure

Singapore Police, in consultation with the Attorney-General's Chambers, concluded their investigation into falsification-of-accounts and cheating offences on 29 April 2026, nearly three years after the police report was filed. The Police stated there was no basis for bringing criminal charges against any current or former employee or director examined, and that no further action would be taken. SPH Media said its own internal process had been considered closed since "end-2023," after internal findings and gaps had been addressed.

Timeline of events

Date	Event
September 2020 – March 2022	Period later found by SMT's internal review to contain overstated circulation data
19 July 2021	SPH Media Trust incorporated as a Company Limited by Guarantee
15 February 2022	Government commits up to S$900 million (S$180 million/year) in funding to SMT over five years
23 December 2022	Three senior SMT executives separated from the organisation over circulation discrepancies
8 January 2023	Wake Up Singapore breaks the story of the executive departures
9 January 2023	SMT shares its internal report with the Government; People's Voice calls for a Commission of Inquiry
18 January 2023	The Online Citizen publishes an anonymous whistleblower's allegation about a town hall meeting hosted by SMT's CEO
20 January 2023	SMT issues its first public statement, discloses preliminary ~90,000-copy overstatement estimate, and tasks its Audit and Risk Committee (chaired by Max Loh) with a full investigation
6 February 2023	Parliament addresses 18 PQs on the matter; Minister Teo confirms no impact on committed funding
March 2023	First tranche of Government funding to SMT disbursed
16 June 2023	SPH Media Holdings' Audit and Risk Committee publishes its forensic report
21 June 2023	SPH Media files a police report on the ARC's recommendation
6 July 2023	Parliament reviews the ARC's findings and SMT's accountability measures
End 2023	SPH Media considers its internal process closed
29 April 2026	Police close the investigation with no criminal charges filed

See also

• SPH Media Trust
• The Straits Times