Company in Facebook furor suspends CEO
LONDON – The board of Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm that allegedly exploited information from 50 million Facebook users to help Donald Trump’s campaign, suspended CEO Alexander Nix on Tuesday for his comments secretly recorded by a British broadcaster.
Channel 4 filmed Nix making controversial statements about his firm’s work on elections, including how Cambridge Analytica played a major role in Trump’s presidential victory.
The CEO suggested to a potential client that his company could portray politicians in compromising situations. Nix’s suspension was effective immediately.
“Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm, and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation,” the board of directors said in a statement.
A British parliamentary committee summoned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday to answer questions on whether users’ personal data was improperly used to influence elections. Facebook didn’t say whether he would appear. The tech giant said it’s focused on its own reviews.
In a Channel 4 broadcast Tuesday evening, Nix downplayed his private testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in December when he was asked about his firm’s work for Trump’s presidential campaign.
Nix said Republican lawmakers asked him just three questions. “After five minutes — done,” he said about his testimony behind closed doors. “They’re politicians, they’re not technical. They don’t understand how it works,” he said.
Channel 4’s broadcast came a day after the network showed surreptitiously obtained video of Nix saying his company could entrap politicians. Monday night’s broadcast in Britain showed an exchange in which Nix said the company could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house.” Ukrainian girls, he said, “are very beautiful. I find that works very well.”
Cambridge Analytica denied in a statement Monday that it or its affiliates “use entrapment, bribes or socalled honey-traps” against politicians. It also denied any wrongdoing over the Facebook data it acquired from Cambridge University psychology professor Alex Kogan.
Channel 4 said it filmed a series of meetings at London hotels from November to January, during which a reporter posed as an operative for a wealthy client hoping to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka. In addition to Nix, other senior Cambridge Analytica executives, including Managing Director Mark Turnbull, attended the meetings.