I last wrote about the Apostille Convention in 2014. Also known as the Apostille Treaty, it is an international treaty of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. The treaty allows countries signed up to it to simplify the process of certifying the validity of public documents. Basically, all that is needed is for a “Competent Authority” in the country to issue the apostille.
“Public documents” can include birth, marriage and death certificates, passports, notarial acts and academic qualifications.
Countries not a party to the treaty must resort to a more troublesome and costly legalization procedure. The term, “chain certification”, aptly sums it up, as the document has to pass through several bodies before it is recognized as valid in another country.
As far as Malaysia is concerned, there is no change since my last article: it is still not a signatory to the Apostille Treaty. Thus, in the simplest of cases, a public document must first be notarized, then the notarization must be authenticated by the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, before it is legalized by the consular office of the relevant foreign embassy or high commission.
The foreign ministry charges only RM20 per document. Every embassy fixes its own fees, and these can be quite high. Each embassy also has its own procedures for submissions, mode of payment and collection of documents. I have written about the process at the Embassy of Georgia. I plan to write, from time to time, about the procedure at other embassies in Malaysia.
Malaysian Notary Public 