Sting Operation at Bogor Land Agency: DPR Demands KPK Expose Building Rights Trafficking Network
Member of Commission III of the Indonesian House of Representatives, I Nyoman Parta, has pressed the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to thoroughly dismantle the entire network engaged in buying and selling land authority within the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency (ATR/BPN). He made the call following a KPK sting operation concerning the processing of Building Use Rights (HGB) in Bogor Regency on Monday (14 September 2026).
In the operation, the KPK detained 17 people, including an echelon I official (Director-General), the head of the Bogor Regency Land Office, the head of the Tangerang City Land Office, executives of a listed property company and political brokers, and seized evidence including rupiah and foreign currency in 20 bags worth hundreds of billions of rupiah.
Parta stressed that the number of high-level officials caught demonstrates that corruption at the land agency is no longer merely the act of individual rogues, but a systemic crime that treats authority over HGB, cultivation rights (HGU) and management rights (HPL) as a commodity.
“The composition of those detained shows this is not merely a matter of bad apples. We are talking about central officials, heads of land offices, corporations and political brokers. If the government continues to hide behind the word ‘rogue elements’, we will never touch the root of the problem. What must be exposed is the network,” Parta said on Tuesday (15 September 2026).
He highlighted the irony of the arrest of a supervision and enforcement official at the Ministry of ATR/BPN who, despite only being inaugurated in February 2026, was already ensnared in the bribery vortex. He argued that the Minister of ATR/Head of BPN must take responsibility for explaining the selection, placement and supervision patterns of officials within the ministry.
Beyond the poor internal oversight, Parta linked the KPK operation to a raid by the Greater Jakarta Metropolitan Police at the Bogor Regency Land Office a week earlier concerning a case of forged documents in the 2019 land certification programme (PTSL). This string of cases strengthened his argument in the plenary session of the DPR’s Legislative Body on the drafting of the Agrarian Reform Bill in early September.
“Twelve days ago I asked the Legislative Body whether legislation could curb irregular practices at the land agency. Today the KPK has answered in the starkest way. The problem is not only the norms, but also the practice and oversight of authority,” he said.
Parta asked the KPK not to stop at field arrests, but to prosecute the perpetrators under the Money Laundering Law and to test the criminal liability of the corporations involved. He also pushed for a comprehensive evaluation of large-scale HGB issuance and strengthened deliberation of the Asset Forfeiture Bill.
“Money of that magnitude does not simply appear. The state must know where it came from, where it flowed, who enjoyed it, and what assets were acquired. We continue to uphold the presumption of innocence, but the state must not wait for a court verdict to fix a leaking system. Land is a constitutional mandate, not a commodity to be traded through power,” concluded the PDI-P politician.