Practice Areas

Introduction

From the early days of the Zharif Nizamuddin’s inception, the Firm has been assisting clients from all spectrums in dealing with issues arising from financial crimes which covers corruption, fraud, tax evasion or any of the scheduled offences under the Malaysian Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Act 2001 (AMLA) regime.

Our internal team which comprises of lawyers, legal executives and financial analysts have represented a wide range of clients, including the government, enforcement agencies, corporations, or institutions; due to their involvement as victims, whistle-blowers, witnesses with valuable information or accused of committing the financial crime and alleged offenders. In ensuring the best possible outcome, we have experience working closely with various enforcement agencies, asset tracing specialists and lawyers across the globe.

Nizamuddin Hamid heads our Financial Crimes and Asset Recovery Practice Group, while our Corporate Commercial Partner, Amir Zharif Abdullah also contributes a significant part of his time leveraging on his compliance-related experience in an international law firm and an in-house counsel of a global group of energy and petrochemical companies.

Asset Recovery

Recovering assets misappropriated through financial crimes requires lawyers to work closely with forensic accountants, auditors, asset tracing specialists and enforcement agencies in ensuring that most if not all of the misappropriated assets are identified accordingly.

Agility and the capacity to network internationally are the essence of most complex asset recovery cases, where typically assets are moved from one jurisdiction to another through a string of complex financial transactions.

Our Firm has proven its agility and ability to coordinate complex asset recovery exercises with stakeholders from multiple jurisdictions and among others, the Firm has been mandated by the Government of Malaysia in 2019 to assist the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in recovering assets related to 1Malaysia Development Berhad outside of Malaysian jurisdiction. Part of the exercise includes the on-going action against Tarek Obaid and the Petrosaudi group of companies by the Government of Malaysia.

Financial Crimes

With cases of corruption, fraud, tax evasion and other related financial crimes on the rise not only in Malaysia but globally, enforcement agencies have stepped-up their efforts by exercising their considerable powers under the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Act 2009 (MACC Act) as well as AMLA against alleged offenders and even witnesses accused of committing financial crimes.

Our internal team which comprises of lawyers, legal executives and financial analysts have represented a wide range of clients, including the government, enforcement agencies, corporations, or institutions; due to their involvement as victims, whistle-blowers, witnesses with valuable information or accused of committing the financial crime and alleged offenders. In ensuring the best possible outcome, we have experience working closely with variousenforcement agencies, asset tracing specialists and lawyers across the globe.