The provincial agency that approves the conversion of farmland to houses says no one told them agricultural land owned by B.C.'s ex-solicitor general would soon have several large new homes.

B.C.'s Agricultural Land Commission says it was approached by the RCMP last year about whether the subdivisions at Rosebank Place in Chilliwack were done properly by John Les in 1997 -- but no one reported those subdivisions to the Commission at the time.

"We have no documents on that," said Colin Fry, the executive director of the Agricultural Land Commission.

Anyone who wants to develop land in the Agricultural Land Reserve -- B.C.'s best farmland -- has to get approval from the Agricultural Land Commission.

It's an important step, because once the land is removed from the ALR it can be worth millions to developers.

While John Les was mayor of Chilliwack, a numbered company he controlled acquired and then rearranged boundaries of properties near Rosebank Place in Chilliwack in 1997.

By 1999 -- the year he stepped down as mayor -- he had made $417,000 from the sale of two of those properties.

That's despite the ALC denying the previous owners of the property from being able to develop in 1985 and 1992.

In 1997, no one told the Agricultural Land Commission that Les's developments were taking place.

That meant that the only official body that sanctioned the rezoning of John Les's property was Chilliwack city hall -- and John Les was mayor.

While city council minutes show that Les stepped out of the room for discussions about the properties, the RCMP are investigating him and several others for their connection to this and other land dealings in Chilliwack.

After a special prosecutor revealed Les was under investigation last Friday, he stepped down, denying wrongdoing.

"I've previously already said that I've always done everything appropriately, so, you know, beyond that I just don't want to be feeding into a bunch of speculative stories," he told CTV News on Wednesday.

The approval officer who had the responsibility to decide whether or not the ALC should be informed of the Rosebank Place land deal was Grant Sanborn.

Reached by telephone, Sanborn refused to comment, except to deny that he was involved.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Stephen Smart and Jim Beatty