I originally had no interest in watching this, thinking that the whole 1MDB saga is over and done with. What changed my mind was Najib Razak’s interview in it and his recent request to have the documentary taken down from Netflix. Hooray Streisand Effect! I’m not sure that this is actually a decent film as some of the editing choices are questionable and the interstitial scenes they made are downright cringey. I’m not sure how much sense it would make to non-Malaysian audiences either. I personally was able to follow along because I already mostly everything. Overall I’d say it was a worthwhile use of my time mainly due to the Najib interview and the perspective it offers from the FBI agent attached to the US embassy in Malaysia.
The documentary has a rather US-centric focus for obvious reasons. It introduces the 1MDB scandal by emphasizing the involvement of high profile American celebrities and how some of the stolen money funded The Wolf of Wall Street film. It goes on to explain the ostensible purpose of the Malaysian investment fund, the key people involved and its foreign partners. It then moves on to tell the story of how the scheme was unraveled. The roles of Ho Kay Tat, CEO of The Edge and Clare Rewcastle Brown are well known but I really liked seeing Xavier Andrew Justo, the informant who provided much of the key information, speaking up for himself. Also incredible are the testimonies of the people on the US side, especially the FBI investigators Charles W O’Neal and David Smith. The best part is still Najib Razak’s attempts to defend himself by effectively claiming that he was a victim of the fraud as well and the system around him that was supposed to warn him about it failed him. This of course ignores the fact that many did indeed sound the alarm and all were shut down and dismissed by Najib himself.
It was always going to be difficult to make this corruption scandal engaging enough for international audiences so I don’t blame director Cassius Michael Kim for hyping up the Hollywood connection so much. Even the interviews with writers and editors of celebrity gossip rags aren’t exactly informative. Sometimes they play up the skullduggery of obtaining information too much such as Rewcastle Brown’s unneeded comment about Bangkok being a large and scary city. It’s amusing that she and Justo were willing to go along with acting in made up shots of furtively meeting in a car somewhere at night just so that they have more to show in between interview footage but those just look dumb. It’s hard for me to judge how well this documentary conveys enough information to people not already familiar with 1MDB or even Malaysia but I believe it gets the gist across even if it might get confusing at times.
As a Malaysian, it was particularly sobering to realize if not for the dogged persistence of key people attached to the US embassy, Najib would not have been brought down at all. Some missteps in the choice of interview subjects are also evident. For example, Syed Saddiq appears but he has nothing to do with 1MDB beyond being a young idealistic Malaysian role model politician. It’s ironic then that since that interview he has been convicted of criminal breach of trust himself. The film lists many people who have refused to be interviewed, mainly American celebrities but also others like Tarek Obaid, CEO of Petrosaudi, in order to shame them. Yet it lists only Rosmah Mansor as a Malaysian who has refused to be interviewed. This means that there are so many missed opportunities. For example, I can’t imagine that Mahathir Mohammad would have turned down an opportunity to speak out against Najib who he repeatedly called a robber. Did they not even think to ask Muhyiddin Yassin for an interview? He was after all one of the casualties of what the documentary calls the Night of the Long Knives and he was Najib’s Deputy Prime Minister who turned against him. I can’t imagine he would agree to speak on camera given subsequent events but he should at least have been asked and listed as a refusal. Similarly they talk a lot about Goldman Sachs but leave out AmBank. The 1MDB money after all appeared in Najib’s personal accounts with AmBank and the bank’s officers took instructions from Jho Low.
The 1MDB scandal is a complicated affair and there’s only so much an hour and a half long documentary can cover. I suppose this one does an okay enough job even if it is mainly geared towards an international audience and serves as a solid starting point to read up on what happened elsewhere. I note that its recent release on Netflix may even have an effect on Malaysian politics as Najib’s lawyers have responded to it and it may well have a role to play in Najib’s upcoming Pardons Board hearing.