'Duta enclave' land dispute: Govt valuer further explains how she went about evaluation

• Halimatul Saeidah Abd Ghani, 49, said that although she agreed that some plots of land in Mont’Kiara and Kenny Hills were comparable property to the ‘Duta enclave’, she did not use them in her valuation as those plots contained tiny bungalows.

KUALA LUMPUR (June 19): A government property valuation expert continued to testify on Thursday on how her valuation methods differed from the private valuer’s, over the long-standing "Duta enclave" land dispute.

Halimatul Saeidah Abd Ghani, 49, said that although she agreed that some plots of land in Mont’Kiara and Kenny Hills were comparable property to the ‘Duta enclave’, she did not use them in her valuation as those plots contained tiny bungalows.

"The real estate in question is agricultural land with the potential to be residential land, and is not the right comparison with the plots containing the small bungalows," she said on Thursday.

Halimatul said this during re-examination by senior federal counsel Mohammad Al-Saifi Hashim. She is taking the stand as part of court proceedings on assessing "mesne profits" that are to be paid out to the liquidators of Semantan Estate (1952) Sdn Bhd.

She added that she did use residential land comparison, which differed from the plaintiff's valuation. She said she considered large tracts of land converted into residential land, as opposed to the plaintiff's valuation, which was comparisons to bungalows in land which was already subdivided into smaller lots.

It is the government's stance that their valuation of mesne profits is RM289.846 million, a mere fraction compared to the maximum RM13.242 billion valuation by Semantan Estate’s appointed valuer.

Mesne profits are “the rents and profits which a trespasser has, or might have, received or made during his occupation of the premises, and which therefore he must pay to the true owner as compensation for the tort which he has committed”, according to Jowitt’s Dictionary of English Law.

Previously, Halimatul had testified that she used the Decapitalisation of Market Value method, and said that the private valuer's reliance on year-to-year valuation to get the value of the land was not accurate as it was based on assumptions. 

Trial to continue in July

The trial is slated to continue on July 9 and 10, with a second government valuer taking the stand.

The 263.27 acres were acquired by the government in 1956 to be transformed into what they called “the Duta enclave”.

Currently, it houses government buildings that include the Tun Razak hockey stadium, the Malaysian Institute of Integrity, the National Archives, the Kuala Lumpur Syariah Court, the government complex building along Jalan Duta (the Inland Revenue Board building), the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Academy, as well as the flyover and a section of Jalan Duta (now Jalan Tuanku Abdul Halim) heading towards Segambut, and possibly portions of the Federal Territory mosque.

The land was acquired by the government in 1956 for the price of RM1.32 million under the then-Land Acquisition Enactment, for the purpose of developing a diplomatic (Duta) enclave.

In 2009, the High Court ruled that the government had trespassed on the land, and in 2012, this decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal and the Federal Court.

In November 2018, a Federal Court bench, led by then-Court of Appeal president Tan Sri Ahmad Maarop, dismissed the Malaysian government’s application to review the 2012 decision, resulting in that judgement remaining intact.

Semantan Estate claimed it had retained its beneficial interest in the land in Mukim Batu, which it alleged the government had taken unlawful possession of, and that the government should pay the company mesne profits as damages for trespassing, with the said damages to be assessed by the court.

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