A lawyer acting for the disgraced former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has called for the takedown of a Netflix documentary about a multibillion-dollar fraud scandal that occurred under his administration.
Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, the lead defence counsel for Najib, who is serving a 12-year sentence on corruption charges, said Man on the Run was “sub judice and contemptuous”, according to local media reports.
The documentary, which was released on Netflix in January, tells the story of the 1MDB state fund, which was set up to promote development but became engulfed in one of the world’s biggest financial frauds.
The US Department of Justice has alleged that billions of dollars were fraudulently diverted from the fund by individuals and corporations, with money used to buy hotels, a luxury yacht, art and jewellery and to finance Hollywood films.
The documentary’s title is a reference to the Malaysian-Chinese businessman Low Taek Jho, known as Jho Low, who has been accused of masterminding the fraud and whose whereabouts is not known. Jho Low has denied wrongdoing.
The scandal shook Malaysian politics, leading to the ousting of Najib’s Umno party after 61 years in power, and prompted a series of investigations in countries around the world.
Najib, who was Malaysia’s prime minister for nine years, was jailed in 2022 over corruption charges related to 1MDB – the first former leader to be imprisoned in the country.
Najib, who has denied any wrongdoing, continues to face various other cases over allegations of abuse of power and money laundering.
Muhammad Shafee told the Kuala Lumpur high court that the documentary was prejudicial to cases, describing it as “extremely sub judice and contemptuous.”
He called for the deputy public prosecutor, Ahmad Akram Gharib, to watch the documentary and discuss it with other officials so it could be taken down, adding that the attorney general was “bound by duty to take action”, according to the Malaysiakini news site.
It was also reported that Najib wanted to file a contempt of court application and defamation suit against the former Malaysian attorney general Tommy Thomas and the British journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown over their comments in the documentary. Rewcastle Brown was at the forefront of exposing the scandal.
Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
