Lee's effects offered for charity

Lee's effects offered for charity

SINGAPORE: Personal items belonging to modern Singapore's founding father, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, will go under the hammer in an auction for charity, a report said on Monday.

The Lee family has donated several possessions including a jade seal inscribed with his name and a fur hat worn by the former prime minister, who shepherded the tiny, resource-starved island into a wealthy city-state in just about three decades.

Talks are being held with international auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's to organize the auction here possibly within the first half of 2003, the Straits Times reported.

Also among the items to be put under the hammer are gifts Lee received as prime minister. The items, considered state gifts, had been bought by the family from the government.

Lee's daughter Wei Ling, deputy director of clinical services at the National Neuroscience Institute, recently helped raise money to benefit troubled teenage girls and initiated the charity auction move. --AFP