Najib and Rosmah star in Netflix's 'Dirty Money' season 2 promo

Former Malaysia PM Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor will be a part of Netflix's second series of Dirty Money, according to an official trailer released by the streaming platform which featured Najib's face in its thumbnail.

The almost two-minute long trailer shows frames of Najib and Rosmah with voice overs saying "How could the wife of a politician afford such luxury?", and "I think he thought he could get away with it". The trailer also flashes the term "1MDB" in one of its frames, referencing the infamous scandal where Najib faced corruption and money laundering charges due to misappropriation of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state fund. In October 2019, multiple media reports reported that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission fined a total of 80 individuals and entities for misappropriating from 1MDB funds.

The trailer was released on 27 February and has garnered 223,338 views at the time of writing. A+M saw multiple comments pointing out Najib's appearance in the trailer. This includes most netizens who said they clicked on the trailer because the thumbnail featured Najib's face, as well as a few others who said they are not surprised that Najib is making an appearance in the Netflix series. A+M has reached out to Netflix for additional information.

Dirty Money is an investigative documentary series which explores scandal, financial malfeasance and corruption in the world of business. In its first season, which featured six different stories, Dirty Money investigated scandals that involved the president of United States Donald Trump, as well as brands such as automobile manufacturer Volkswagen and banking company HSBC. A quick check on the Netflix app showed that the second season will be made available from 11 March onwards.

In April 2019, Netflix was criticised by netizens for leaving Malaysia out of its new culinary documentary series Street Food Asia, which features the various street food in Asia. The featured countries in Street Food Asia were Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, India and South Korea. Some Malaysians later took to Twitter to voice their displeasure, with some commenting that nearly every other Southeast Asian country is featured in the series except for Malaysia.

In response to being left out of Netflix's Street Food Asia, Malaysian radio station BFM 89.9 launched a #BersatuForMakan (Unite for Food) campaign together with Fishermen Integrated, with the petition calling for the inclusion of Malaysia in Netflix’s documentary series Street Food. Malaysia Airlines and Tune Hotels showed support for the campaign by coming on board as flight sponsor and accommodation sponsor respectively.

Netflix also took efforts to localise content for its Southeast Asia markets. Over the years, it has launched Asian content from Korean dramas and variety shows to production by Asian storytellers. In 2019, Netflix was said to be increasing its investment in over 100 new and returning originals from Asian storytellers across eight countries in Asia. To remove language barriers and deliver the best television experience, Netflix also invested heavily on subtitling and dubbing with localised user interfaces in Thai, Korean, Traditional and Simplified Chinese and Japanese.

Read more:
MACC fines 80 more individuals and entities for 1MDB state fund misappropriation
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