'I was going to offer you £1million': Footage emerges of British data firm 'entrapping a Caribbean politician in a sting on video they then shared online to make him lose election'

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The parent company of Cambridge Analytica has been accused of manipulating an election by framing a politician in a £1million 'bribe' sting.

SCL Group was allegedly employed by the Labour Party of St Kitts and Nevis in order to smear the leader of the opposition, Lindsay Grant during the 2010 elections.

It reportedly paid a contractor £12,000 to pose as a property magnate and offer Mr Grant his support in exchange for a cut-price land deal and filmed it.

Cambridge Analytica bragged about its part in putting Donald Trump in the White House including creating the infamous 'crooked Hillary' campaign, it has emerged today.  

It has also been claimed that CA's boss Alexander Nix referred to two potential clients, who were black, as 'n****s' in an internal email seen by The Times. Mr Nix was suspended last night. 

St Kitts leader of the opposition Lindsay Grant was offered £1million during the 2010 elections in a sting set up by the parent company of Cambridge Analytica

Alexander Nix, who was suspended last night by Cambridge Analytica, is pictured at a polo event with promo girls in 2010

Several large storage crates were removed yesterday from Cambridge Analytica's offices 

Former Cambridge Analytica staff have said the company would pursue 'psychological warfare' on behalf of clients.

One told The Guardian: 'That's what it is. Psyops. Psychological operations. It's what they mean by winning 'hearts and minds'. We were just doing it to win elections in the kind of developing countries that don't have many rules.

Describing life there he said: 'It was like working for MI6. Only it's MI6 for hire. It was very posh, very English, run by an old Etonian and you got to do some really cool things. Fly all over the world. You were working with the president of Kenya or Ghana or wherever. It's not like election campaigns in the west. You got to do all sorts of crazy s**t'. 

In 2005 SCL Group reportedly claimed in a case study they are skilled enough to launch a 'sophisticated campaign of mass deception' to hoodwink the population.

They said that in the event of a smallpox outbreak in the UK they believe they could ensure Britons believed that it was a chemical accident rather than a deadly epidemic. 

The Times reported today that the company secretly filmed the People's Action Movement leader in St Kitts accepting the 'bribe' and shared it online in the days leading up to the election.

It comes amid claims Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest personal information from Facebook users and allegedly use it to influence elections.

SCL's contractor reportedly met Mr Grant at a Mariott hotel in St Kitts and reportedly offered the opposition politician just over £1million for 200 acres of land, well under the real value of the land.

Mr Grant is believed to have accepted the deal after the offer was increased by £150,000.

Unbeknownst to the politician, SCL allegedly filmed the meeting and released the video before the polls opened.

The 2010 election was won by the Labour Party, which won 46 per cent of the vote, while the People's Action Movement received 32 per cent.

Mr Grant resigned from the People's Action Movement in 2012.

Alexander Nix, suspended from his role as chief executive of Cambridge Analytica yesterday, allegedly said he met the US President many times.

The claims emerged in an undercover report from Channel 4 News, which also showed another senior staff member at scandal-hit CA claimed the company was responsible for the 'defeat crooked Hillary' campaign.

The executive told covert reporters that 'we just put information into the bloodstream of the internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again over time to watch it take shape'.

They bragged that the campaign of dirty tricks was so successful that 'it's unattributable, untrackable'.

Andrew Nix, chief executive of Cambridge Analytica was yesterday suspended by the company following allegations about his conduct recorded by undercover journalists 

Mark Zuckerberg, pictured here with his wife Priscilla Chan, has seen billions wiped off the value of his company Facebook as a result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal

Data firm accused of manipulating elections has worked with politicians around the globe 

Donald Trump's stratagists used Cambridge Analytica's data

USA  

During the 2016 US election Cambridge Analytica was able to match this haul of data to electoral rolls, allowing Donald Trump's strategists to carefully calibrate campaign messages to resonate exactly with the hopes and fears of the voters it needed to win.

Often they found themselves bombarded with negative adverts about Hillary Clinton, or viral videos that contained what critics dubbed 'fake news'.

Though Trump lost the popular vote, this helped him win the key marginal states, and with it the White House.

In a subsequent speech, Alexander Nix, whose firm was paid around £4.8million, boasted that 'pretty much every message Trump put out was data-driven'.

Caribbean  

CA's parent company SCL Group was allegedly employed by the Labour Party of St Kitts and Nevis in order to smear the leader of the opposition, Lindsay Grant during the 2010 elections.

It reportedly paid a contractor £12,000 to pose as a property magnate and offer Mr Grant his support in exchange for a cut-price land deal.

The Times reported that the company secretly filmed the People's Action Movement leader accepting the 'bribe' and shared it online in the days leading up to the election.

It comes amid claims Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest personal information from Facebook users and allegedly use it to influence elections.

SCL's contractor reportedly met Mr Grant at a Mariott hotel in St Kitts and reportedly offered the opposition politician just over £1million for 200 acres of land, well under the real value of the land.

Mr Grant is believed to have accepted the deal after the offer was increased by £150,000.

Unbeknownst to the politician, SCL allegedly filmed the meeting and released the video before the polls opened.

There are also claims they carried out a 'targeted digital attack' on Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St Vincent.

Mr Gonsalves later claimed he had been harassed and bullied in a campaign that included an attempted hack on his private email.

There are also claims they worked for free on the election campaign to elect St Lucia's prime minister Stephenson King in return for a contract to run a $1.9million public health campaign.

Kenya 

A Kenyan opposition official says they are poring through a British broadcaster's investigation to see whether legal action is possible against data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica over its role in last year's disputed presidential election.

The firm already is being investigated by British and U.S. authorities over the alleged improper use of Facebook data.

Kenya's National Super Alliance chief executive Norman Magaya says they will look into whether Cambridge Analytica was involved in what the opposition claims is a hack of the electoral commission and manipulation of results in favor of President Uhuru Kenyatta in the August election.

Kenyatta won a fresh election after the Supreme Court nullified the August vote over 'illegalities.'

In the Channel 4 report based on undercover video, Cambridge Analytica took credit for stage-managing Kenyatta's campaign.

AUSTRALIA   

Australia's information commissioner is investigating whether any people in its country are victims of the data scandal.

Cambridge Analytica was looking to expand to the country but deregistered its business name there on Monday.

INDIA

In India, SCL has worked with Ovleno Business Intelligence (OBI) on various elections.  

OBI owner Amrish Tyagi refused to answer questions but said their Indian work had nothing to do with social media or online work and was working with various political parties on the ground.

LIBYA, PAKISTAN, AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ

SCL has been paid more than £150,000 by the Government to research 'behaviour' in conflict zones.

Their work included reports on Libya after the fall of Gaddafi and in Pakistan in 2008. 

SCL is also said to have done similar work for the US Government in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

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Last night CA was hit by fresh allegations that its parent company, SCL Group, tampered in an election in St Kitts and Nevis in 2010 and had advertised its use of 'hackers'. It emerged on Sunday that Facebook had given CA access to the personal data of tens of millions of users, without the users' knowledge.

There were calls for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to resign. He saw £5.3billion wiped off his £48billion personal fortune yesterday due to a plunge in Facebook's share price.

As the Information Commissioner's Office applied for a search warrant for CA's London offices:

• SCL was said to have received hundreds of thousands of pounds from the British government for analysis in conflict zones; 
• Documents produced for SCL's prospective clients allegedly advertised the use of hackers and a 'targeted digital attack', on rival politicians, the Times claimed; 
• Hillary Clinton queried whether SCL helped Russia tamper in the American presidential election; 
• In leaked emails, Mr Nix allegedly referred to two black potential clients as 'n*****s'; 
• A former CA employee claimed bosses ignored his warnings of a 'black market' for Facebook data; 

Mr Zuckerberg was told to 'stop hiding' by MPs and summoned before a parliamentary committee; n Representatives of Facebook were seen entering CA's offices before the ICO, sparking fears that crucial evidence could have been removed.

The pressure on CA has grown after a whistleblower alleged it had obtained Facebook data from 50million US voters from a British firm after it gathered the information using online personality tests.

It also reportedly carried out a 'sting' on Lindsay Grant, leader of the opposition in St Kitts and Nevis, when he ran against CA's client – the country's Labour Party – in January 2010.

SCL allegedly paid a contractor £12,000 who approached Mr Grant's election campaign, posing as an international property developer, and offered £1.07million in a cut-price deal on 200 acres of land.

The incident, which took place at a Marriott hotel in St Kitts, was filmed on hidden cameras and released online without mention of who was behind the sting. Mr Grant lost the election while the contractor behind the operation was paid in cash from SCL's London offices, it was reported. It went on to brag of its success in a book it wrote for prospective clients.

Cambridge Analytica used information from Facebook to target US voters 

Undercover reporters caught Mr Nix on camera boasting about his firm's involvement in helping Mr Trump win power, the Guardian reported. 'The company did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting,' Mr Nix was heard saying.

'We ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy.'

CA deploys social media data which is used to 'microtarget' individuals and send political messages based on their fears.

The undercover footage also showed Mark Turnbull, Mr Nix's colleague, claiming the firm used 'proxies' which included charities to send out negative material on its rival. Mr Turnbull told Channel 4 reporters: 'Sometimes you can use proxy organisations who are already there. You feed them.

'They are civil society organisations ... charities or activist groups, and we use them, feed them the material and they do the work.

'We just put information into the bloodstream to the internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again over time to watch it take shape. And so this stuff infiltrates the online community and expands but with no branding, so it's unattributable, untrackable.'

Mr Nix, right, told undercover reporters that his company used a self-destructing email system that allegedly did not leave any trace

After the company's executives were filmed claiming that it used front companies in elections, Mr Nix said that it used a secret self-destructing email system that allegedly left no trace.

In an interview with defeated presidential candidate Mrs Clinton, which was filmed in 2017 while promoting her book, she described facing 'a massive propaganda effort'. She said: 'So you've got CA, you've got the Republican National Committee which of course has always done data collection and analysis and you've got the Russians.

'And the real question is how did the Russians know how to target their messages so precisely to undecided voters in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania – that is really the nub of the question.

'So if they were getting advice from say Cambridge Analytica or someone else about OK here are the 12 voters in this town in Wisconsin – that's whose Facebook pages you need to be on to send these messages that indeed would be very disturbing.'

She also questioned whether CA was involved in Russia's alleged attempt to influence the election – something it strongly denies.

Mr Zuckerberg, a notoriously secretive social media pioneer, has so far remained silent on how the CA was able to harvest personal information from Facebook users but has now been summoned to appear before a Parliamentary committee to explain himself.

With a boycott of his company gaining momentum on social media, the 33-year-old's grip was further weakened as he faced calls to resign – and a business leader declared him missing in action.

A Facebook spokesman said: 'We have received a letter from the digital, culture, media and sport committee and will of course respond by the given deadline. We continue to engage with the committee and respond to their requests for information.'