A land contract default dispute has broken out in Wacopek Village, Bintan Regency, involving a Chinese citizen and two companies, and bringing them into conflict with the heirs of the deceased; the conflict has now further escalated.
After previously sending a letter to the immigration authorities regarding passport-related matters concerning the Chinese citizen, the legal team representing the heirs has once again submitted a formal application to the Bintan Regency National Land Agency. The legal team applied to the land agency for a temporary freeze on the land involved, requesting a freeze on a total area of approximately 2.53 million square meters, equivalent to 253 hectares, corresponding to the plots listed in the annex to the 2024 notarized asset purchase agreement, and hoping to place this batch of land under litigation preservation during court proceedings.
The lawyer stated that the application specifically requests suspension of processing of one land title confirmation application, covering a plot of approximately 688,989 square meters. The inheritance side demands that the land agency immediately register the frozen status of all disputed land, effective upon receipt of the letter by the land agency. At the same time, the lawyer proposed that, while the case has not yet been concluded, the land agency should suspend all business processes for this parcel of land, including land survey, field verification, plot mapping, committee hearings, title confirmation, ownership registration, and all other follow-up work. It should also be prohibited from issuing land certificates, survey documents, plot maps, title confirmation decisions, and any other legal documents concerning land ownership to the relevant individuals or companies.
The representing lawyer warned that if the land agency ignores this freeze application and continues to conduct surveying, title confirmation, certificate issuance, and other operations on the disputed land under litigation, the inheritance representatives will exhaust all legal means to defend their rights, including administrative litigation, civil litigation, administrative justice, and even criminal channels to pursue relevant liability. The court hearings in this land dispute have previously been obstructed multiple times, and the Chinese national defendant has repeatedly failed to appear at mediation proceedings.
This case also reflects the risks in local land transactions in Indonesia: once a cross-border land asset transaction encounters a performance dispute, it will face multiple practical difficulties such as evidence collection, the parties’ appearance in court, and freezing of ownership rights.
