Cambridge Analytica's ex-CEO banned from running companies for 7 years
Alexander Nix ran the UK political consulting company, which was linked to Donald Trump's US presidential campaign in 2016.
Former Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix has been banned from running limited companies for seven years, the UK government said in a Thursday release. He ran the data analytics and political consulting firm as it got embroiled in scandal in 2018 after it improperly accessed the personal information of up to 87 million Facebook users.
Cambridge Analytica, which was linked to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, suspended Nix as CEO in March 2018 after he and other senior executives were caught on video saying they'd go beyond using data to hurt a client's rival political candidate. The company shut down that May.
Nix was also in charge of the elections division of SCL Group, of which Cambridge Analytica was an offshoot.
"Following an extensive investigation, our conclusions were clear that SCL Elections had repeatedly offered shady political services to potential clients over a number of years," Mark Bruce, chief investigator for the UK government's Insolvency Service, said in a release.
"Alexander Nix's actions did not meet the appropriate standard for a company director and his disqualification from managing limited companies for a significant amount of time is justified in the public interest."