FILE PHOTO: CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, gestures during the Web Summit, Europe’s biggest tech conference, in Lisbon, Portugal, November 9, 2017. REUTERS/Pedro Nunes
May 17, 2018
LONDON (Reuters) – The ex-boss of Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that closed down after being involved in a scandal about the improper use of the data of millions of Facebook <FB.O> users, will appear in front of British lawmakers on June 6.
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said that Alexander Nix had accepted its summons. While Nix has testified once to the committee, lawmakers want him to give further evidence – a request he had previously declined.
“We are glad that Alexander Nix has accepted our summons. The Committee will use the opportunity to address numerous inconsistencies in his previous evidence,” Damian Collins, the committee’s chairman, said in a statement.
The media committee is investigating fake news, and is increasingly focused on the role of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook in the 2016 Brexit vote and in the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Cambridge Analytica has denied doing paid work on the campaign for Brexit, and says its work on the Trump campaign did not use data at the center of a Facebook scandal, where the details of around 87 million users were allegedly improperly obtained.
Cambridge Analytica said it pitched to Leave.EU, a Brexit campaign group, but did not do any work for them after it missed out on the official campaign designation to Vote Leave, which is separately being investigated for possibly breaches of campaign finance rules.
The committee said that Dominic Cummings, former campaign director Vote Leave, had refused to appear in front of lawmakers to discuss the campaign and its use of data.
Collins said that Cummings would be reported for failing to appear, which “could result in a decision that a contempt of parliament has been committed, a very serious outcome for the individual.”
(Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Costas Pitas)
