There are other hazards...

Extortion, smuggling, drug dealing, prostitution, protection racket and loan sharking are but some of the illegal activities that the Mafia engage in. The protection racket though, is considered to be the group's raison d'être in the early days, providing private protection and security in return for money or favours. Clients who sign up for the racket will be protected from fraudsters, thieves and even competitors. This was at the turn of 20th century America but of course it is still thriving now. Conversely, gangsters from all over the world indulge in a more or less similar business model.


Protection racket is a necessary evil. Imagine you open a restaurant. Business is very encouraging. On the second month of operation, you are called on by a gentleman who demands that you pay protection fee. Insisting that you don't need any protection (because the Rukun Tetangga unit and the police patrol the area quite diligently), you politely decline his request and send him on his way. Next morning, you turn up at work and find that the expensive Rubbermaid rubbish bin has gone missing. You dismiss that as the handiwork of a drug addict. Later in the evening, you receive a distress call from your staff saying that someone tries to break into the premises and broke some glass panel while at it. You lodge a police report. Two police officers come by, one is smoking and the other wearing a uniform that's bursting at its seams. They have a chat with you and offer that it could be the neighbourhood notorious cat. I mean, there have been cases before involving the elusive feline. On the very next day, a graffiti is spray painted on the roller shutter of your shop. You start to sense something's wrong because that's three days in a row that you have befallen with misfortunes. True enough, the gentleman appears again at the doorstep promising that all these troubles will go away once you start paying up. At that point, you won't think about reporting him to the police because the event where the officer blames the cat has somewhat diminished your confidence on the force. Never mind that the method used by the criminal to solicit for the contract in the first place is an offense by definition but in the end he will triumph because you know what's good for you in the long run.

The concrete stumps pilfered from the adjacent vacated land. A lone warehouse in the background... (Apple iPhone 4s)

Sometime in the last week of June, a person who claimed to be the owner of the neighbouring tract of land has erected a ring fence to stop the construction vehicles from accessing the site through his land. We know that his claim can not be true because the plot in question is a TNB-reserve land, in other words a no-mans land. There had been times where the delivery team would remove the blockade and drive straight through. Then out of nowhere, a couple of guys looking more like junkies than accomplished muscle men would spring on the guys and make a lot of noise and threats, not yet to the point of physical aggression but enough to scare the poor workers, both foreign and local. He had on a few occasions brought along a 'policeman' with him to the site, which after some prodding on my part turned out to be someone in a Rela (paramilitary civil volunteer corps) uniform. But together they had managed to create the impression of being victimised: that his land has been trespassed.


It has been trying time for everyone. In fact, we have lost almost two weeks due to the blocked entrance. The raw materials couldn't get to the site so work did not get done. I should clarify here that there is another entry point through the nearby housing estate but we don't want the heavy construction vehicles to irk the residents whom would soon be our neighbours. The access road this person is obstructing is through the back way, passing by a lumber warehouse of some sort. Driving further in would lead to a plant nursery.


I finally met up with the person this weekend to settle the score after he stood me up the first time round. Arriving an hour late, he had on him a thick folder containing an assortment of documents but the proof that the adjacent land was under his name. He claimed that few other plots nearby belong to him or his family. Another revelation would be that our own land used to be his uncle's at one point in history. 


To save you the pain of reading on the crap that I had to listen to, he's asking for a compensation of RM10,000 for the damages done. Damages that only consisted of removing the concrete stumps from the ground with no other obvious destruction as far as the eye could see. Repeating for what would easily be the umpteenth time, he was never interested in money. And as if to win my heart, he said he had no problem with me as the land owner but this was more to teach good manners to the boorish contractor. This is totally unexpected and has never been taken into account. I've seen and heard crooked authorities collecting monthly fees from poor workers and mind you it's already happening at our site but a third party demanding from a member of the public is just not on. To the person and this is something that he insists on, he is taking the money from the rude contractor, not us. I told him it's us who's paying the bills ultimately. 


I reasoned with him that we don't use the road every day and perhaps the more practical way to charge is on pay-as-you-enter basis. Really, in a month we make less than five delivery trips although that might increase two-fold towards completion time. Additionally, I offered to make good the road when everything's over. After spewing out much more crap, he lowered it down to RM6,000, before finally agreeing to half of the original amount. 


Throughout the time, I could sense that he's done this several times to many caught-up victims. When I challenged him on the legality of the ownership, he said I could go to the Land Office and verify myself but he would not wait up for me to dig a trench since the ring fence was not effective. He would continue finding ways and means to block the conduit until 'further actions' are necessary. 


Before the meeting, my other half and me had talked at great length about the matter. Going the legal route would take time and money which means unwelcome delay. Reporting the matter to the police will not guarantee to keep him away from our property and family in the long term because we don't know if he's got someone on the inside working in cahoots. As long as there is no obvious crime committed, the police are not going to take any action. (I've lived in the country that long to come to that conclusion.) He could come to the site late at night and do something nasty. He could send his goons to seize the materials in daylight even. He could do many things that we could not prove. 


Best part is that we still don't know if the land is his or not. What if it really was? Could he block the passage permanently to send the message that he's really pissed with us for not trusting him in the first place? That's going to hamper the project in a bigger way.


The line between protection racket and extortion is blurred in my case but the reality is that I'm stuck in the middle and I just want to get out of it as fast as I can, like most targets. The easy way out is to give what he has asked for after some reasonable negotiation.


What would you do if you were in my shoes?