Cambridge Analytica Suspends CEO For Facebook Data Scandal

Cambridge Analytica has suspended CEO Alexander Nix effective immediately until it completes a full investigation of his actions regarding the Facebook data scandal.

According to The Associated Press, the company’s board cited comments Nix made to an undercover reporter for Britain’s Channel 4 News for its decision to suspend him.

The board said that Nix’s comments “do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view the violation.”

The U.K.-based company has been accused of helping Trump win the 2016 presidential election by improperly using information from more than 50 million Facebook accounts. While the company denies any wrongdoing, Britain’s information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, is seeking a warrant to search the company’s servers.

In the meantime, Britain’s Channel 4 News has been airing footage from a secretly recorded meeting one of its reporters had with Nix.

The clips show Nix admitting his firm played a major role in securing Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including “all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting.”

Nix also said the company used emails with a “self-destruct timer” during the campaign to make its role more difficult to trace.

“There’s no evidence, there’s no paper trail, there’s nothing,” he said.

The U.K. parliamentary media committee has also asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to give evidence in an investigation into the scandal.

Its chairman, Damian Collins, said that his group has repeatedly asked the company how it uses data and that Facebook officials “have been misleading to the committee,” adding that it “is now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process.”

Denham said she is also investigating Facebook and has asked it not to pursue its own audit of Cambridge Analytica’s data use, which she says the social media company has agreed to.