[2] In return, Aw had to repay the loan at a "ridiculously low rate interest of 0.1 percent per annum".
From January 1967 to March 1968, communist officials gave Aw another HK$1.2 million, but with an added condition that he must appoint their representative as an adviser to the newspaper.
[3][4] In 1971, Eastern Sun and The Singapore Herald were both discovered to have been run using foreign funding and were accused by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew on May 11 of having been involved in "black operations" through the biased news that they published.
[5] On 15 May 1971, the government released a statement saying that loans totaling HK$1.2 million had been made by a "Communist intelligence organization in Hong Kong" to Aw.
[3] On 18 May 1971, after these accusations, the Eastern Sun shut down due to their editor-in-chief, Sam Krishniah, and six other senior expatriate staff leaving the newspaper.