Mustafa Ling & Co.

On the court record

Mustafa Ling & Co. is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters are argued before the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan), the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), concentrated in criminal litigation. In each reported matter the firm appeared for the respondent or for an appellant, engaging the appellate and apex courts on questions of criminal liability and procedure. At Federal Court level it appeared for the respondent in a prosecution appeal brought by the Public Prosecutor against a Court of Appeal decision on four criminal charges, a matter carried to the highest court in the country.

The firm's criminal practice engages the substantive elements of serious offences and the procedure that governs their appeal. It has appeared in a prosecution concerning criminal breach of trust under section 409 of the Penal Code, where the elements in issue were whether the respondent had been entrusted with monies and whether those monies had been misappropriated, the classic questions on which a breach-of-trust charge turns. It has also argued a criminal appeal engaging the procedure for appeals under sections 307 and 308 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the transmission of the appeal record, the powers of the Court of Appeal under the Courts of Judicature Act 1964 and the treatment of the record and evidence.

In the appellate matters the firm gave close attention to whether the record before the court was complete and correctly transmitted, on the footing that a criminal appeal can be won or lost on the adequacy of the record as much as on the merits of the charge. The reported profile is that of a criminal-litigation practice operating at the appellate and apex levels, engaged both with the substantive ingredients of offences such as criminal breach of trust and with the procedural framework, appeal records, transmission and appellate powers, that determines how a criminal appeal is conducted and decided. The firm's consistent appearance as respondent in the most senior courts reflects work defending outcomes reached below through the full appellate hierarchy.