MA HOA TRADING CO. LTD

On the court record

Illustrates how the trade-description and customs regimes apply to goods in transit and to the forfeiture of seized consignments bound for a foreign destination.

Ma Hoa Trading Co. Ltd appears in the reported judgments as a company involved in a customs and trade-description dispute over seized goods, litigated before the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), with the prosecuting authority appearing as Pendakwa Raya (the Public Prosecutor). The matters concern the seizure and forfeiture of goods said to bear a false trade description.

The core question, on appeal, was whether an offence had been committed under section 5(1)(c) of the Trade Descriptions Act 2011 read with section 6(1)(g) of the same Act — whether the company was a person who exposed for supply, or had in its possession, custody or control for supply, cigarettes bearing a false trade description. A distinct and significant issue was whether cigarettes that were goods in transit and transshipment, en route to a third-party consignee in the Philippines, could be subject to seizure and forfeiture enforcement under section 47 of the Trade Descriptions Act 2011. That question goes to the territorial reach of trade-description enforcement over goods merely passing through Malaysia.

The related High Court decisions, framed partly in Malay, arose from an appeal from the Sessions Court in a matter brought by the domestic-trade ministry, concerning a seizure of twenty-one containers of cigarettes bearing a particular trade description. The court's disposition was recorded in the court's own words — Rayuan dibenarkan, 21 kontena dikembalikan kepada KPDN (the appeal was allowed, and the twenty-one containers were returned to the ministry) — engaging the Trade Descriptions Act 2011, the Trade Marks Act 2019 and the Customs Act 1967, and the disposal of seized goods without a prosecution. Across the matters, the company illustrates how the trade-description and customs regimes apply to goods in transit and to the forfeiture of seized consignments, and the limits of enforcement over goods bound for a foreign destination.