Kit & Associates

On the court record

Kit & Associates appears in the reported judgments as a criminal-defence practice with a supporting company docket, its work concentrated in the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) as well as the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), and it appears most often as counsel for appellants. Drug prosecutions dominate its criminal corpus: appeals against conviction and sentence for trafficking under seksyen 39B(1)(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952 (section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952), punishable under section 39B(2), and full criminal trials (perbicaraan penuh), including the question at the close of the prosecution case whether a prima facie case was made out. Its criminal work also reaches abduction under section 3(1) of the Akta Culik 1961 (Kidnapping Act 1961) read with the Penal Code, and an application for the forfeiture of property under section 56 of the anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorism-financing legislation. On the civil side the firm appears in company law, including a dispute over internal management where the principle of judicial non-intervention was in issue — the rule that courts are slow to interfere in the internal affairs of a company — and questions concerning directors' resolutions in writing and the company constitution under the Companies Act 2016. Acting predominantly on the defence side in its criminal matters, and carrying many of them to the Court of Appeal, the firm occupies the role of an appellate criminal-defence practice for the most serious charges, principally capital drug-trafficking matters, while maintaining a distinct company-law practice. Its corpus pairs the defence of grave criminal charges with the internal-governance disputes of companies, a combination that gives it a broader profile than a purely criminal chambers. The forfeiture matter, engaging the anti-money-laundering regime, adds a further dimension linking the criminal and asset-recovery fields, since a forfeiture application asks the court to strip a person of property said to be tainted, a remedy that operates alongside but independently of any conviction for the underlying offence.