‘WE WERE CHEATED BY MCA’: BUDDHIST GROUP SUES LIOW & CO FOR FAILING TO SELL LAND AS PROMISED

PETALING JAYA – A Buddhist organisation has filed a lawsuit against MCA, after the Barisan Nasional (BN) party allegedly reneged on its agreement to sell a one-acre plot of land to the body.

Chempaka Buddhist Lodge president SK Tan said he had filed the case at the Shah Alam High Court last week, as MCA has not been forthcoming on its end of the deal for the Kampung Chempaka land sale.

“The issue was five years ago, we were approached by someone who was approached by MCA to buy the land. So the person was not up to buying the land, and they put MCA in touch with us.

“Selangor MCA, the people in charge at that time, they were quite interested to sell the piece of land to us, so we negotiated with them, and they said they cannot directly sell the land to us,” Tan told tje media here.

He claimed that he was not informed as to why the land could not be directly sold.

However, he claimed that he was then told to purchase a ready office block for the same market price as the land — RM 2.5 million — and then swap the building for the land.

Chempaka Buddhist Lodge sued MCA over a Kampung Chempaka land deal.

“They gave us a letter to start the process, which is what we did,” Tan said, adding that he had then purchased an office building in Shah Alam, and paid a 10 per cent deposit of RM250,000.

“So we paid the 10 per cent, and we went back with our lawyer’s sales and purchase agreement and back-to-back agreements for swapping. Since then, until now, we have not received the conclusion to this transaction,” Tan added.

The land in question, was also the subject of Selangor DAP’s criticism, whose lawmakers accused MCA of buying the state land purportedly worth RM18 million for RM50,000.

In September, Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua alleged that the transaction was done via the area’s former MP Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun in 2007 when BN was in power in Selangor.

Damansara Utama assemblyman Yeo Bee Yin had also claimed the then BN state government had approved the land to be sold at RM1 per square feet to MCA and the transactions were allegedly done hastily.

The matter came to light after MCA recently applied to the state government to change the zoning of the land ― which is a water body ― to a commercial plot, Yeo claimed.

– Malay Mail