A data analytics firm that worked for Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016 allegedly uses shell companies, sex workers, fake news and bribes to sway election outcomes in several countries, Channel 4 News reported. The claims were purportedly made by top executives to the channel’s undercover reporters.
The channel claims to have evidence of the firm’s officials boasting about having worked in election campaigns across the world, including India.
The allegations were aired two days after Cambridge Analytica was accused of using private data of more than five crore Facebook users during Donald Trump’s election campaign.
The company’s executives purportedly told undercover reporters that they used methods including entrapping rival election candidates in fake bribery stings and hiring sex workers to seduce them. A man believed to be Chief Executive Officer Alexander Nix is heard saying in the clips: “It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that do not necessarily need to be true as long as they are believed.”
Nix reportedly said the company found material on political opponents by sending “some girls around to the candidate’s house”, and Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well”.
He is also heard describing how the company uses fake bribery stings: “We will offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we will have the whole thing recorded, we blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.”
Nix purportedly made the claims in a series of meetings with a reporter posing as an aide of a wealthy client wanting to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka.
A Cambridge Analytica spokesperson refuted the allegations. The company said that it “does not use untrue material for any purpose”.
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