Cambridge Analytica Boss Told Employee: ‘We Have Multiple Contacts With Both Major Maltese Parties’
Big data firm Cambridge Analytica had “multiple contacts” with both the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party, according to its former boss Alexander Nix.
A leaked email that Nix had sent former Cambridge Analytica employee Brittany Kaiser on 8th July 2016 includes Malta among a list of countries whose elections the company was targeting.
“Elections not due until 2018 – we have multiple contacts with both main parties. We will make our approach in the autumn,” Nix wrote.
Although Malta’s general election was indeed originally due in 2018, it ended up being held in June 2017 after Prime Minister Joseph Muscat announced a snap election.
The email is part of a data dump from the emails of Brittany Kaiser, who used to work with Cambridge Analytica for three years but who has since become an advocate about the threat posed by Facebook to democracy.
She notably featured in the Netflix documentary ‘The Great Hack’.
Both the PL and the PN have denied ever making use of Cambridge Analytica’s services, but former PN secretary general Paul Borg Olivier has confirmed that Nix had approached him with an offer related to the targeting of voters through behavioural dynamics a few months before the 2013 election.
Borg Olivier said he had instantly turned down Nix’s offer because he had never heard of the company, and because the timing of the offer – so soon before the election – seemed suspicious.
The Labour Party has denied having had any contact whatsoever with Nix, Cambridge Analytica or any similar company or with anyone claiming to be their representative.
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