SINGAPORE — Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s nephew, Mr Li Shengwu, has hired top British lawyer David Pannick to advise him in his contempt of court case.

Mr Pannick is one of the lawyers who, this week, won a landmark case to overturn the British government’s suspension of parliament in the weeks before the deadline to exit the European Union.

Mr Li, 34, wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday (Sept 25) that he has just filed his defence affidavit, adding that his legal team has taken advice from Mr Pannick over the past two years.

“I’m grateful for Lord Pannick’s guidance and help, even as he has been in the midst of winning a landmark constitutional case in the UK,” Mr Li said.

The contempt of court case is over a Facebook post Mr Li made on July 15, 2017, in which he wrote that the Singapore Government was “very litigious” and has a “pliant court system”.

He was commenting on the dispute between his father, Mr Lee Hsien Yang, and aunt Lee Wei Ling and his uncle over the fate of the home of his grandfather, the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, at 38 Oxley Road.

The Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) called the post an “egregious and baseless attack” on the judiciary and started contempt of court proceedings in August that year.

Mr Li, an assistant professor of economics at Harvard University, claimed that the post was shared only with friends.

His lawyers, Mr Abraham Vergis and Ms Asiyah Arif from Providence Law Asia, then challenged an order the AGC had obtained that allowed it to personally serve him papers relating to his case outside of Singapore.

In March last year, the High Court dismissed Mr Li’s application to challenge the order. But in September the same year, a Court of Appeal allowed him to appeal against the High Court’s decision.

On April 1 this year, the apex court dismissed his appeal, ruling that the AGC had properly served him the papers at his workplace in the United States in 2017.