PETALING JAYA, May 16 — The Protect Taman Desa coalition filed a report with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) today to investigate a former minister for alleged involvement in corruption.

Four members of the coalition are seeking a full and thorough investigation of former Federal Territories minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Mansor over his role in the transfer of land belonging to Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) in Taman Desa, and by extension the whole of Kuala Lumpur, to Yayasan Wilayah Persekutuan as well as other private developers.

Tengku Adnan, also known as Ku Nan, is the chairman of the foundation, Yayasan Wilayah Persekutuan.

“Following discussions with DBKL with regards to the complaints of overdevelopment in Taman Desa, the residents decided to file the report when it was discovered that two parcels of land — one gazetted and designated for Community Centre, and another for Public Library and Park — have been transferred to private developers for the development of affordable homes program (Rumawip) and an upmarket condominium respectively.

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“The land designated for Taman Desa Community Centre was previously used by Seputeh Umno branch for its own activities. It is not known how Umno managed to secure the land for its activities,” said the group’s media coordinator M. Gunasekar.

The report made this morning is the second MACC report filed by Taman Desa residents on the conversion of public-owned land to private developers.

On November 16, 2017, a total of 78 Taman Desa residents filed a report to probe the conversion and sale of land to a private developer for a new condominium project called The Address.

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They claimed that there appeared to be irregularities linked to the project.

The residents want MACC to probe how the land — formerly gazetted as utility firm Tenaga Nasional Berhad’s (TNB) reserve land in the previous Kuala Lumpur Master Plan and designated as a green lung in the ungazetted Kuala Lumpur Master Plan 2020 — was converted to development purposes and sold to a developer.

Protect Taman Desa coalition chairman Frank Yeh said checks showed that public land belonging to DBKL or the federal government had been transferred by the land office to private owners such as Yayasan Wilayah Persekutuan and private developers.

“The transfer does not take into consideration the appropriateness for development. The value of the transaction is also not known, and it is also quite clear that this land is normally flipped to developers,” he said.

In order to prevent further environmental degradation as well as to preserve the land from development, Yeh opined that the Pakatan Harapan administration should issue a temporary stop-work order on all projects in Kuala Lumpur, pending a review of the feasibility studies of each project.