Mataram Court Holds First Hearing on Corruption Case Involving MXGP Samota Land

The Corruption Court at the Mataram District Court in West Nusa Tenggara held the first hearing for the case concerning the purchase of 70 hectares of land for the MXGP circuit site in the Samota hills area on Sumbawa Island during the 2022 fiscal year. The trial, involving three defendants—Subhan, Muhammad Jan, and Saifullah Zulkarnaen—began with the reading of the indictment by the public prosecutors before the panel of judges chaired by Lalu Moh. Sandi Iramaya on Wednesday. The public prosecutors took turns reading the indictment, outlining the criminal acts of corruption that arose in the land purchase by the Sumbawa Regency Government. A second deviation occurred in the verification stage of the procurement planning documents, where the Land Procurement Planning Document Verification Team (DPPT) failed to verify the contents of the documents as required by regulations. Furthermore, regarding the appointment of the implementing structure, the head of the land procurement implementation is said to have appointed the head of Task Force B, who was not from the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency (ATR/BPN). There were also criminal issues in the identification and inventory of the land. “The party claiming ownership did not match the physical condition of the land, and had even never seen the physical certificate,” said Fajar Alamsyah Malo, representing the prosecution team. Other criminal acts also emerged in the changes to land parcel data. Defendant Subhan, who at the time served as the Head of the National Land Agency in Sumbawa, accepted objections and carried out corrections to the parcel map and nominative list without verification. Due to these activities, the two defendants from the appraisal team did not present their valuation results before the land procurement implementers or related agencies. Finally, regarding the actions of Saifullah Zulkarnaen as the person responsible for the appraisal team, he made corrections to the valuation report after the contract period had ended. As a result of these criminal acts, a state financial loss of Rp6.7 billion arose, which has been returned during the prosecution’s investigation phase by the land seller, Ali Bin Dachlan. The prosecutors in the indictment stated that the three defendants have violated Article 603 and/or Article 604 in conjunction with Article 20 letter a or c of Law No. 1 of 2023 on the Criminal Code jo. Article 18 of Law No. 20 of 2001 on Amendments to Law No. 31 of 1999 on the Eradication of Criminal Acts of Corruption.