21 land owners probed

09/04/2008 The Star By Christina Tan

SHAH ALAM: Twenty-one land owners are being investigated by police or will be taken to court for involvement in a 2.8ha land scam, said Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim.

“Most of the multiple land ownerships took place in cities and suburbs such as Petaling and Gombak and was due to problems in recording,” he said.

On April 3, The Star front-paged a story on the Selangor Government opening investigations into allegations of massive land fraud cases said to run into hundreds of millions of ringgit.

Last week, former Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Khir Toyo said that neither he nor the former state executive councillors were involved in the said cases.

He claimed that a syndicate was involved in the scam that could have occurred when the manual system was computerised.

Khalid said the statement by Dr Khir did not help solve the problem.

“I will meet the officers of state Land and Mines department and district office to ensure they will continue to work and help the state government to update the land records as well as to solve the serious problem,” he added.

Khalid also revealed that a total of 4,325.5ha from the 241,568ha of the state's forest reserve land had its forest reserve status removed between 2000 and last year.

“All the land and district offices have been ordered to get the details of those who got the reserve land.

“Some of the reserve land have been used for property development,” he said, adding that an in-depth investigation would be carried out.

Khalid said that as the state government believed in transparency and the right to information he would reveal the results of the investigation to the public within a month.