This is an interesting news. It has been recently detected (meaning someone want to implicate) that Samy Vellu is the beneficiary of a 3-acre land next to SJKT Effingham, in Bandar Utama, worth about RM50 million. The land is meant to house MIC’s new headquarters.

MIC Secretary General Dr S. Subramaniam says the approval to obtain and build the headquarters was done legally since its being held by trustees as per its constitution.

In addition, each of its trustees executed a ‘Pengakuan Penempatan’ addressed to the land office confirming that they (on behalf of MIC) as trustees were making the said application.

– Malaysiakini.

Application was done at Petaling Land Office in the year 2000. He says that all parties concerned were clear that the MIC was proprietor of the land. Proof is available that assessment rates, quit rent etc were paid by MIC.

The title deed was issued in July 2005, and is being kept by MIC’ property division but it seems they overlooked the error in proprietor name which should have been “MIC” instead of “Samy Vellu”. But MIC is in the process of correcting this mistake. It is also stated that the land have been reported in all its audited accounts since 2000.

According to Malaysiakini who picked The Sun’s news, The Petaling Land Office gave the Barisan Nasional party a 99-year lease to 12,141 sq metres of the land in 2005 – making it the largest recipient.

The newspaper report detailed that the 24,000 sq metre land was for both the school, SRJK (Tamil) Ephingam and other public amenities as intended by the area developer. The land was handed over by the developer to the state government for this purpose, however
it was then procured by private parties – with MIC being one of them (buying the land for RM3 million). The buyers have since developed the land for commercial purposes.

There’s two issue here: first the naming of Samy Vellu as benificiary and secondly the usurping of land meant for Tamil school. For the first case, we can take it as genuine mistake and let MIC correct the mistake via legal means. After all, the land have been reported in their accounts all this while.

The second issue bothers me. For the champions of Tamil schools, guardian of Indian community and other self-anointed title-holders to buy land meant for school is revolting. 6 acres were allocated to the school, SJKT Ladang Effingham in 1995 by the developer who gave the land to the state goverment. The state goverment (Menteri Besar at that time was Abu Hassan Omar) then sold half of the land on a 99-year lease to MIC for RM3 million in 2000.

According to Subang MP Sivarasa, MIC should not have bought the land as it should have been aware that the Selangor Education Department had also stipulated that the minimum size of all schools should be five acres (But Seafield school in Kg Medan was 0.6 acre? – remember Toyo and Samy at Kg Medan?).

The school was built in 1998 and consist of a field and a three-story building.

Now, this may mean that MIC honestly did not know the actual purpose of the land when it made the purchase, which in my opinion seriously damages its credibility. OR it may mean that MIC are not really worried if the school has 3-acre only.