Nearly a year ago, Singaporean lawyer Samuel Seow – prominent within the city-state for representing big-name clients in the entertainment industry – was rocked by scandal after reports emerged that he had allegedly assaulted two female employees at the joint offices of his law firm Samuel Seow Law Corporation (SSLC) and artist management company Beam Artistes.
Details from the incident rolled out over the course of a month, from late April to May of 2018: The story originally broke after the two women filed a police report against Seow on charges of verbal and physical assault, followed by he-said, she-said accounts of what happened, and reached a height of public scrutiny after a leaked audio file of the entire altercation was released and went viral online.
Now, Seow is back in the media spotlight following the release last Friday of two videos uploaded to YouTube – one that includes footage of the now infamous altercation between Seow and two former female employees who filed (and later dropped) charges against him, as well as a shorter video in which Seow can be seen repeatedly slapping a female employee at the same office on the same day. The lawyer subsequently filed a police report over the leaked videos, according to the Straits Times.
Coconuts Singapore has reached out to Seow for comment and embedded both videos below so you can judge for yourself.
It is not currently known how the footage, presumably taken from the office’s CCTV cameras, was obtained. The identity of the original uploader is also unknown – the YouTube account under which they were published, named “Sam Beats,” appears to have been made for the sole purpose of releasing these videos. No other videos or activity have appeared under that user account since the two videos were published last Friday.
The videos first came to public attention after local Facebook group Sure Boh Singapore shared the longer of the two videos on its page on Friday, a post which has, at the time of this article’s publication, received more than 888,519 views and has been shared on Facebook 18,395 times.
Seow has thus far not come out with an official public statement regarding the release of these videos, but shared his thoughts in a now widely disseminated Facebook post in which, according to the Straits Times, he stated last Friday that he is “unsure what the people who continually post edited sound clips and videos are trying to achieve. I had admitted that there was an issue in my office last year, and will leave the police to reach their findings.”
In the same post, Seow also said that “Being an entrepreneur is never easy … and as someone who manages three companies, I do get stressed up,” and concluded with: “I hope to find closure with this issue soon, so I can move on with my life after my mistake from a year ago, so that the people who are constantly and conscientiously seeking to damage me can finally also, rest peacefully.”
Full disclosure: Coconuts Media has previously engaged the legal services of SLCC.
