“There is a land acquisition mafia. For those who don’t want to give a commission, the process is made more complicated. It is always like that,” Ahok said at City Hall on Monday as reported by kompas.com.

“Nearly all land acquisitions are sluggish, particularly since I issued a non-cash transactions [ruling] and said that transfers should be to the bank accounts of land owners,” said Ahok.

He accused civil servants at the administration of intentionally making land acquisition complicated because they no longer received illegal fees following the non-cash policy.

He said, however, that it was difficult to prove any wrongdoing because there was no concrete evidence.

Sluggish land acquisition mostly occurs in the city’s housing and administrative buildings agency and parks and cemeteries agency.

The governor said some of his subordinates told him to issue a memo so that the land acquisition process could be accelerated, but the governor said it could be a trap like the land acquisition case surrounding Sumber Waras hospital in West Jakarta, in which he was questioned by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for an alleged mark-up.

He said he wanted to replace civil servants who were allegedly involved in the “land mafia”, but there were no other people to fill the roles because non-civil servants were not allowed to hold such positions. (bbn)

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