Friday, August 24, 2018

Cambridge Analytica's Vincent Tchenguiz Is Back In the News

From the Times of Israel:

Cambridge Analytica-linked businessman helped start Black Cube, lawsuit claims
Vincent Tchenguiz also helped controversial 'private intel agency' apply for Israeli government grant for developing dual-use technologies; Economy Ministry won't say if it got one
Vincent Tchenguiz, an Iranian-born British entrepreneur and property tycoon who until 2015 was the largest shareholder in the parent company of the scandal-hit data firm Cambridge Analytica, also played a prominent role in the founding stages of the controversial Israeli business intelligence company Black Cube, and provided it with vital funding, according to a 2013 Israeli lawsuit filed by lawyers for Tchenguiz.

Tchenguiz, whose family is of Iraqi-Jewish origin, fell out with the secretive Israeli company and its founders and sued it for fraud and other alleged offenses, seeking almost a million pounds in damages. The case, which received very little media coverage at the time, was ultimately settled out of court.

Vincent Tchenguiz, an Iranian-born British entrepreneur and property tycoon who until 2015 was the largest shareholder in the parent company of the scandal-hit data firm Cambridge Analytica, also played a prominent role in the founding stages of the controversial Israeli business intelligence company Black Cube, and provided it with vital funding, according to a 2013 Israeli lawsuit filed by lawyers for Tchenguiz.

Tchenguiz, whose family is of Iraqi-Jewish origin, fell out with the secretive Israeli company and its founders and sued it for fraud and other alleged offenses, seeking almost a million pounds in damages. The case, which received very little media coverage at the time, was ultimately settled out of court.

Black Cube, which was founded in 2011 and whose former honorary board president was the late Mossad chief Meir Dagan, has been at the center of considerable international press scrutiny in recent months.

Many of the company’s reported behind-the-scenes activities — including its work in Romania, its work on an election campaign in Hungary (where it denies involvement), its involvement in the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and its activities relating to the Iran nuclear deal, when it allegedly conducted a “dirty ops” campaign against former Obama administration officials — have made headlines worldwide.

Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL Group, too, have been the subject of intense media attention, with the FBI and US Justice Department reportedly investigating the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica over its role in the 2016 election campaigns of US President Donald Trump and other Republican politicians, including the harvesting and alleged illegal use of personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users.

Black Cube — which calls itself a “private intelligence agency” and employs former members of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence units — has denied any links to Cambridge Analytica or any of its subsidiaries. (Last month, the British Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sports Committee issued a report alleging that Black Cube had engaged in election-related hacking in Nigeria on behalf of SCL-linked companies, citing testimony it heard in March by Cambridge Analytica’s former research director Christopher Wylie; however Wylie retracted this allegation in US Senate testimony in May, and it was also denied by Brittany Kaiser, who managed Cambridge Analytica’s project in Nigeria, in written testimony to the British committee.)...
....MUCH MORE