London office of Cambridge Analytica

London, May 18, 2018 (AltAfrika)-Cambridge Analytica, the firm at the centre of a Facebook privacy scandal in Nigeria, Kenya, UK and the united States has filed for bankruptcy after losing “virtually all” of its customers, British tabloid, Independent reports

The political consulting company, which tried to influence the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria through fake violent videos and  carried out work for Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, submitted a petition for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in New York late on Thursday.

A Chapter 7 procedure is used when a company is closing down and liquidating its assets to pay off its creditors

In a statement on its website earlier this month, Cambridge Analytica said that it would cease trading because the scandal had “driven away virtually all of the company’s customers and suppliers”.

The firm is accused of improperly using data from millions of Facebook users to influence voters in the US presidential election, Nigeria, Kenya as well as the EU referendum in the UK.

This week, a whistleblower accused former Cambridge Analytica director Steve Bannon of seeking to use Facebook profile data to promote a “culture war” and persuade black people not to vote in the 2016 US presidential election.

The company acquired profile information from up to 87 million Facebook users that had been harvested in 2014 by data scientist Aleksandr Kogan through a personality test app.

At the time, Facebook allowed developers of apps on its platform to collect data not only from those who had directly consented, but also from friends of those people. It has since tightened up its data policy.