British political data mining firm, Cambridge Analytica (CA), which is at the center of Facebook’s election manipulation scandal in the United States worked for President Kenyatta's campaigns in the 2013 and 2017 elections, a secretly recorded video broadcasted by Britain’s Channel 4 News on Monday has revealed.
The company has however refuted to all claims made by Channel 4 News regarding its practices.
The news channel said it had secretly filmed top Cambridge Analytica officials confessing they had used bribes, former spies and Ukrainian sex workers to entrap political leaders around the world.
On Saturday, the New York Times reported that CA had gotten private data from over 50 million Facebook users to support United States Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign.
CA managing director Mark Turnbull is recorded by Channel 4’s undercover investigative team saying that the company secretly stage-managed President Kenyatta’s highly contested campaigns.
“We have rebranded the entire party twice, written the manifesto, done research, analysis, messaging. I think we wrote all the speeches and we staged the whole thing – so just about every element of this candidate,” Turnbull said of his firm’s role in President Uhuru former political party, the National Alliance and subsequently as the Jubilee Party.
Last year, former US presidential contender Hillary Clinton termed the Kenya's repeat presidential election as a “project” of Cambridge Analytica. President Uhuru's Jubilee Party is yet to comment on the matter.
At a prior meeting, Turnbull told the reporters: “Our job is to really drop the bucket further down the well than anybody else to understand what are these really deep-seated fears, concerns. “It is no good fighting an election campaign on the facts, because actually it is all about emotion.”
Cambridge Analytica top executives also admitted to using web of shell companies to disguise their activities in Mexico, Malaysia and Brazil during their elections.
Chief Executive Alexander Nix is recorded boasting: “We are not only the largest and most significant political consultancy in the world but we have the most established track record. We need to operate through different vehicles, in the shadows.”
“I look forward to building a very long-term and secretive relationship with you,” he tells the reporters.
Channel 4 said it recorded the officials during a meeting at a London hotel in January.
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