The Law Chambers of Fazaly Ali

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates the construction of the anti-corruption offence of accepting gratification and the inference of knowledge in a drug-trafficking prosecution from an accused's conduct in evading the police.

The Law Chambers of Fazaly Ali appears in the corpus as counsel in criminal litigation, acting both for appellants and for the accused at first instance, in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) in both English and Bahasa Malaysia.

A notable matter concerns corruption. Acting for an appellant, the firm appeared in an appeal against a conviction under section 165 of the Penal Code for a public servant accepting a valuable thing without consideration, where the court examined the ingredients of the offence and a point of construction on the authoritative Malay text of the anti-corruption legislation, namely the distinction between menyetuju terima (accepts) and bersetuju untuk menyetuju terima (agrees to accept), and whether the accused knew that an intermediary had a connection with his official functions.

On the dangerous-drugs side the firm acted for the accused at first instance in a trafficking prosecution under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, where the accused had led police on a lengthy high-speed chase before drugs were found in the car, the court considering whether custody, control and knowledge were established, whether knowledge could be inferred from the accused's conduct in refusing to stop, and whether the presumption of trafficking under section 37(da)(xvi) was proven. The firm also appeared for an appellant in a Malay-language trafficking appeal engaging the admissibility of an agent provocateur's evidence under section 40A of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, common intention and the presumption under section 37(da), and, in a further first-instance trafficking matter, defended an accused charged with trafficking cannabis and possessing the poison Etizolam under the Poisons Act 1952, engaging adverse inference under section 114(g) of the Evidence Act 1950 and the impeachment of a witness. The firm's record is a dedicated criminal practice spanning corruption and serious drug offences.