FORMER deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin said he had no knowledge of Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm banned by Facebook and which had done electioneering work in Malaysia.

Now with opposition party Bersatu, the ex Umno leader blamed the use of such consultancy firms on Prime Minister Najib Razak’s habit of “doing things on his own”.

“I don’t know anything. Najib does things on his own,” he said during a press conference in Parliament today. 

Putrajaya has a penchant for hiring foreign strategic media firms to bolster its image with only a small circle in government knowing about it.

It ran into controversy when it paid FBC Media (UK) RM28.35 million – nearly £6m – for work on a “Global Strategic Communications Campaign” in 2009.

A similar sum, RM29.34 million, was designated to the company the previous year.

It had also engaged International public relations firm APCO Worldwide to handle political and crisis management issues and was believed to have paid RM77 million for its services

Muhyiddin was Barisan Nasional’s elections director during his time with Umno. He was dropped from the cabinet in 2015 and sacked from the party in 2016 and is now Bersatu president.

Malaysia is among the countries Cambridge Analytica has done work to collect people’s data and profile them to tailor election campaign messages.

On the Cambridge Analytica website, Malaysia is mentioned as a case study as it did work for the BN in Kedah with a targeted campaign highlighting its school improvements since 2008.

BN won Kedah back from Pakatan Rakyat in the 13th general election, winning 21 out of 36 state seats and 10 out of the 15 parliamentary seats.

Two of the firm’s top executives were also recorded in a Channel 4 News undercover video explaining the nature of their work, which they said they’d done in Malaysia as well.

But the video report by the UK media outlet also alleged the firm employed unethical methods to support clients’ campaigns, including entrapments, which Cambridge Analytica has denied.

Bersatu chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who was at the press conference, said it could have been the federal government that dealt with the firm and not Kedah BN.

“There was no record of the Kedah government doing that thing. Kedah never had outside interference in our elections,” Dr Mahathir said.

Cambridge Analytica worked with US President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

It was banned from Facebook after failing to delete user data sent to it by a popular psychology test app maker.

According to its website, it has offices in four major cities in the world and one in the Kota Damansara suburb outside Kuala Lumpur. 

But a visit by The Malaysian Insight to the address on Sunday found it to be a house in a gated and guarded community, with the owner, who had lived there for four years, unaware his house address had been used as the firm’s address. – March 20, 2018.