KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 30 ― The controversial sale of hectares of public land to private developers in Kuala Lumpur was approved by the Prime Minister’s Department when the Barisan Nasional (BN) was in government, according to Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor.
The Putrajaya MP washed his hands of the matter even though the sale happened when he was the Federal Territories minister and the secretary-general of the BN, which was then led by Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
“First of all, I want to inform the members of this House that I had handed over the land problems in the Federal Territories during my tenure as minister to the Prime Minister's Department. I had nothing to do with the land (sale) approval in the Federal Territories.
“I thank the minister for conducting his study... many say I wasn't called in by the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission but I've been called by the MACC 12 times and I've given them my statements,” Tengku Adnan, popularly known as Ku Nan, told the Dewan Rakyat today.
Earlier during Question Time, Cheras MP Tan Kok Wai accused Tengku Adnan of selling Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) land at below market price through direct negotiations or even without negotiating at all.
“This is a huge scandal that has created a loss for the public and DBKL. Those responsible should be brought to court and (made to) face justice equivalent to the crimes they have committted,” said Tan, referring to Tengku Adnan.
Federal Territories Minister Khalid Abdul Samad also revealed at the same time that there were 97 DBKL land transactions between 2011 to 2018.
Under his watch, Khalid referred all the cases to the MACC for investigation.
Khalid said he also established a special task force under DBKL to look into the matter, which procuded a report that cleared 43 transactions of suspicion.
However, 14 transactions involving 53.94 acres were cancelled with the agreement of the developer; 15 transactions involving 145.7 acres were renegotiated and DBKL gained RM149 million more than the initial sales.
“There are 20 transactions where the projects have been completed and the grants have been issued but the process has raised some doubts. We can't do anything but hand this over to the MACC.
“Finally there are five cases where we could not find an agreement with the developers. We might be seeing them in court,” said Khalid.
* A previous version of this story contained an error which has since been corrected.
