Yahoo Finance Mark Zuckerberg faces formal summons from MPs
MPs have raised the prospect of a formal summons to force Mark Zuckerberg to appear in Westminster, after the Facebook founder's ignored requests to appear in person.
Damian Collins, the chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee investigating the company, said he may take the drastic measure after it emerged that Mr Zuckerberg had agreed to appear before the European Parliament to answer questions on the data scandal surrounding the company.
Mr Zuckerberg will appear before EU politicians in May, a month after the Facebook founder was grilled by US politicians over the company's handling of the data scandal, to explain how Cambridge Analytica was able obtain data relating to 87 million Facebook users. A European Parliament spokesman said: "Mark Zuckerberg will come to [the European Parliament] in May. But he has conditions. Parliament [is] still looking for the right format for the hearing."
On Thursday Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer appeared before MPs to face questions about the data row. Mr Schroepfer is the most senior Facebook executive to come before Parliament, but after the five-hour hearing, in which MPs accused Mr Schroepfer of failing to answer questions, they turned on Mr Zuckerberg himself.
"We believe that, given the large number of outstanding questions for Facebook to answer, Mark Zuckerberg should still appear in front of the Committee.
"As an American citizen living in California, Mr Zuckerberg does not normally come under the jurisdiction of the UK Parliament, but he will the next time he enters the country. We hope that he will respond positively to our request, but if not the Committee will resolve to issue a formal summons for him to appear when he is next in the UK."
In written evidence, Mr Schroepfer claimed that Facebook's investigation showed that the data of 87m people, obtained by Cambridge Analytica, had not been employed in 2016's EU referendum campaign.
He said Aggregate IQ (AIQ), a Canadian political data company allegedly linked to Cambridge Analytica, had spent roughly $2m (£1.4m) on the Brexit campaign, but that the individuals it targeted did not significantly overlap with those whose data was obtained by Cambridge Analytica.
Mr Schroepfer said: "AIQ could not have obtained these email addresses from the data ... gathered from Facebook. AIQ must have obtained these email addresses for British voters targeted in these campaigns from a different source."
Facebook suspended AIQ earlier this month over alleged improper data sharing of Canadian citizens. Cambridge Analytica has repeatedly denied links to the AIQ's work on the EU referendum.
MPs said they were concerned Facebook had failed to disclose the company's dealings with Cambridge Analytica, including a legal agreement in December 2015 to ensure the data harvested by researcher Aleksandr Kogan and sold to the company had been deleted.
The committee members previously met leaders from Facebook in February in a hearing in New York, but the agreement between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica was not disclosed. Labour MP Ian Lucas said: "I think Facebook concealed the truth from us in February."
Mr Schroepfer told MPs Facebook was working to ensure no other apps on Facebook had harvested user data in the same way. On Wednesday, Facebook reported its revenue had risen to $12bn (£8.6bn) for the quarter. The company's shares rose 9pc on Thursday.
