PTI, LONDON: A former employee of Cambridge Analytica turned whistleblower said today that the company had worked extensively in India and believed it was employed by the Congress party during his evidence before a UK parliamentary committee investigating the issue of fake news.
Christopher Wylie deposed before the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMS) here amid an escalating row around alleged Facebook data breaches linked with the controversial UK-based company, which has also been linked with alleged attempts to influence elections in India.
“When you look at Facebook’s biggest market, India is the top in terms of numbers of users. Obviously, that’s a country which is rife with political discord and opportunities for destabilisation,” said Labour MP Paul Farrelly, member of the parliamentary committee, during his questioning.
“They (Cambridge Analytica) worked extensively in India. They have an office in India,” Wylie responded.
“I believe their client was Congress, but I know that they have done all kinds of projects. I don’t remember a national project but I know regionally. India’s so big that one state can be as big as Britain. But they do have offices there, they do have staff there,” the 28-year-old added, on being probed further.
He offered to provide the committee “documentation” on India, which was welcomed by Farrelly, who said India was a country that did not need any added “tensions”.
During his evidence, Wylie also said that his predecessor, Dan Muresan, Head of Elections at SCL Group, had also been working in India before he died in Kenya under mysterious circumstances. He claimed to have heard stories that Muresan, a Romanian national, may have been poisoned in a hotel room while in the African country.
Paul-Olivier Dehaye, co-founder of PersonalData.IO, a service that helps individuals regain control over their personal data, also giving evidence to the committee, added that he had heard reports that Muresan was being paid by an Indian billionaire who wanted Congress to lose elections.
“So he was pretending to work for one party but actually paid underhand by someone else,” said Dehaye. He added that it would be for Indian and Kenyan journalists to get together to investigate the matter further.
At the start of today’s session, it emerged that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has declined to appear before the committee amid an ongoing row over data breaches linked to the social media company.
