(Bloomberg) -- Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm accused of improperly obtaining the personal data of as many as 87 million Facebook users, said acting Chief Executive Officer Alexander Tayler has stepped down to return to his former position in the company.
Tayler will resume his role as the firm’s chief data officer “to focus on the various technical investigations and inquiries,” Cambridge Analytica’s board said Wednesday in a one-paragraph statement. The company couldn’t immediately be reached for further comment.
Tayler was named acting CEO on March 20, when the board suspended Alexander Nix from the position after he was filmed talking about controversial methods used by the firm in political campaigns. The company worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and has been in the spotlight since it was reported in March that the firm used Facebook data gathered by a researcher who created a survey app. The app pulled in personal information not just from those who participated in the surveys, but their Facebook friends if their privacy settings allowed it.
The Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal has been at the center of criticism of Facebook Inc. and has featured prominently in two days of testimony this week by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg before congressional committees.
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