Brexit, the DUP and the data analytics storm
Once described as “our back office” by a former Cambridge Analytica employee and a “franchise” by another, AggregateIQ – a Canadian company based in Victoria, British Columbia – is embroiled in the data analytics controversy surrounding the 2016 Brexit referendum. During that campaign, the DUP utilised the services of the company.
In total, the Vote Leave campaign spent over 50 per cent (£3.9 million) of its £7 million budget on an obscure Canadian data analytics company – AggregateIQ – while a further £757,750 was paid by three other officially registered leave campaigns: BeLeave, Veterans for Britain and the DUP. Of this, the DUP paid £32,750 to AggregateIQ during the UK’s EU membership referendum in 2016. Under UK electoral law, coordination between campaigns is forbidden, unless expenditure is jointly declared.
The following year, the DUP spent a further £12,041 to AggregateIQ as declared to the Northern Ireland Electoral Office, during the Assembly election campaign. Of this, £3,380 was used to back the “social media advertisement” campaigns of Peter Weir, Christopher Stalford and Adrian McQuillan, while the remaining £8,660 went towards “general GOTV [get out the vote]” for the wider party.
Speaking before the House of Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Christopher Wylie, a former employee of Cambridge Analytica (described as “a company that has gone around the world and undermined democratic institutions in all kinds of countries” during the same appearance), maintains: “I am absolutely convinced that there was a common plan and common purpose with Vote Leave, BeLeave, the DUP, and Veterans for Britain. All of these companies somehow, for some reason, decided to use AggregateIQ as their primary service provider when AggregateIQ did not have any public presence, no media, no website.
“The first question I have is: why is it that all of a sudden this company that has never worked on anything but Cambridge Analytica projects, that had no public presence, somehow became the primary service provider to all of these supposedly independent and different campaign groups?”
This, Wylie concludes, renders AggregateIQ as “a proxy money-laundering vehicle” to circumvent campaign spending controls and, he suggested: “I think it is completely reasonable to say that there could have been a different outcome in the referendum had there not been, in my view, cheating.”
Indeed, the Managing Director of Cambridge Analytica and subject of a Channel 4 undercover investigation, Mark Turnbull had previously inadvertently revealed: “Sometimes you can use proxy organisations, who are already there, you feed them. They are civil society organisations – like charities or activist organisations – and you feed them and they do the work.”
However, the single page AggregateIQ website states: “AggregateIQ is a digital advertising, web and software development company based in Canada. It is and has always been 100 per cent Canadian owned and operated. AggregateIQ has never been and is not a part of Cambridge Analytica or SCL. AggregateIQ has never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica. Chris Wylie has never been employed by AggregateIQ.
“AggregateIQ works in full compliance within all legal and regulatory requirements in all jurisdictions where it operates. It has never knowingly been involved in any illegal activity…
“AggregateIQ has never managed, nor did we ever have access to, any Facebook data or database allegedly obtained improperly by Cambridge Analytica.”
In a press release, Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy stated: “I am calling on Arlene Foster and the DUP to come clean about the nature of the services purchased from AggregateIQ, and the full details of their financial relationship with the dark money of the Leave campaign.”
In response, the DUP MP Gavin Robinson raised his party’s concerns about funds raised by Sinn Féin in the US, Canada and Australia and asserted: “This is the real ‘dark money’ influencing politics in Northern Ireland on an ongoing basis.”
