By Emmanuel Samarathisa
KUALA LUMPUR: Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) has refuted reports that it engaged with defunct data consultancy Cambridge Analytica (CA) to harvest information for then ruling coalition Barisan Nasional’s (BN) election campaigns.
“Petronas wishes to categorically deny the allegations against the company reported by Malaysiakini and Malay Mail on January 3, 2020. As per our previous statement published on the Petronas website on March 22, 2018, responding to a similar allegation, the company does not have any association with data consultancy Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL Group,” the national oil company told FocusM in a Jan 6 email reply.
Citing a tranche of leaked documents dubbed the Merdeka Papers, Malaysiakini and Malay Mail wrote that CA and its parent group SCL Group had bid for a US$2 mil (about RM8.6 mil) strategic communications deal with Petronas in 2014.
According to the leak, the Petronas contract had been a “trial run” for CA’s campaign to help BN and Umno win the 14th general election.
Local consultancy Berkshire Media was also named in the Merdeka Papers as CA’s Malaysian liaison. According to a statement available on Malaysiakini, the company denied any involvement with CA or SCL in lieu of the Petronas job.
“We wish to clarify that we were approached by SCL Commercial unit in 2014, before the existence of Cambridge Analytica.
“The joint proposal to Petronas was not for any political campaign, but merely to improve stakeholder relations and communications for the national oil company in Sabah and Sarawak.
“Due to budget constraints by Petronas, the project never went ahead. At the time, we were already serving Petronas and other companies in Malaysia on other projects,” Berkshire Media said.
CA shut down on May 1 last year, just before GE14, after the company was exposed to have harvested Facebook data to manipulate voter sentiments in a few countries, including Malaysia.
As stated earlier, this is not the first time Petronas has been the subject of such allegations. On March 22, 2018, the oil company denied that it paid more than US$2 mil to CA on behalf of the federal government to influence Malaysian voters.
This was in response to a Sarawak Report article that Petronas was used as a front to channel the monies to SCL Group in 2014. – Jan 6, 2020
