MALAYSIA should investigate whether Cambridge Analytica (CA), banned by Facebook for misusing users data, had committed any offence in its alleged political work in the country, PKR said today.

PKR communications chief Fahmi Fadzil said the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the police should look into CA and its affiliate SCL Group for its alleged involvement in Malaysian elections.

A top official from CA, the data analytics firm banned by Facebook, has boasted in a British Channel 4 expose that his company has done electioneering work in Malaysia.

Mark Turnbull, managing director of CA Political Global, told a reporter this during a series of undercover videos filmed over the last year.

On its website CA Political, the data analysis firm stated Malaysia as one of its case studies in Asia.

“CA supported BN (Barisan Nasional) in Kedah with a targeted messaging campaign highlighting its school improvements since 2008.

“BN won Kedah back from Pakatan Rakyat in the 13th general election (GE13) and walked away from a successful campaign. With wins in 21 out of 36 state seats and 10 out of the 15 parliamentary seats in the state,” it said.

However, Mukhriz Mahathir has denied using the services of CA while leading Kedah BN’s election campaign in GE13.

The former Kedah menteri besar, who is now with opposition party Bersatu, said he never knew about the company despite claims by the company that it had supported BN in Kedah with a targeted messaging campaign that highlighted its school improvements since 2008.

Bersatu strategist Rais Hussein also echoed Fahmi’s call for Najib to explain CA’s involvement in Malaysian elections.

“BN has to come out openly and say whether they have hired such a dubious company to influence local elections.

“Opposition is not endowed with such funds able to afford such companies that have ghosted in and ghosted out,” he told The Malaysian Insight, referring to the opposition pact Pakatan Harapan.

The Channel 4 News team caught executives at Cambridge Analytica appearing to say they could extort politicians, send women to entrap them, and help proliferate propaganda to help their clients.

The sting operation was conducted as part of an ongoing investigation into Cambridge Analytica, a data consulting firm that worked with US President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“They are capable of entrapment, this is a dangerous thing that they have done in other countries.

“And who is using them in this country? BN must answer this question because this is worrying for all of us.

“We do not want our country to be a battleground for mercenaries,” Rais said.

Bersatu deputy chairman of strategy and policy Wan Saiful Wan Jan also urged Najib to explain if he had manipulated the last general election and give the assurance that he wouldn’t resort to use manipulative tactics in the coming general election.

“CA is a company mired in scandal for alleged unethical manipulation of personal data for electoral gains.

“They have been accused of extracting the personal data of up to 50 million Facebook users without consent, for use in the American presidential campaign to help Donald Trump by targeting adverts to specific users in a manipulative way, exploiting their ‘inner demons’.

“Najib should immediately explain how much was paid to CA in GE13 and what was the exact nature of their work for Umno,” he said.

He added that Steve Bannon, a former key adviser to Trump and a person notorious for his right-wing views, was on the board of the company.

“No matter how desperate Najib is to stay in power, he must not resort to divisive and unethical tactics of manipulating right-wing and ethno-religious sentiments in Malaysia,” he said.

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

But a visit by The Malaysian Insight found that the address led to a gated and guarded community and the property owner, who has been living there for four years, said the office does not exist in the address listed on the website.

Facebook has banned CA, alongside the accounts of its parent organisation Strategic Communication Laboratories, as well as those of University of Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan and Christopher Wylie, who runs Eunoia Technologies.

The firm was banned after it failed to delete user data sent to it by a popular psychology test app maker.

In 2015, Kogan was accused of violating Facebook’s platform policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica. – March 20, 2018.