THE SNP initiated contact with the data firm Cambridge Analytica and agreed to speak to them over the summer of 2016, despite claiming it dismissed them as “cowboys”.
After a week of pressure over its dealings with the company, the SNP released what is said were all its emails with CA in an attempt to draw a line under the issue.
Westminster leader Ian Blackford called on other parties to be equally transparent about their contact with CA, which is linked to a privacy breach affecting 87m Facebook users.
However the emails undermine some of the SNP’s previous claims on the matter.
READ MORE: Mike Russell refuses to answer key questions about SNP contact with Cambridge Analytica
They confirm CA aggressively wooed the SNP, and were largely ignored after a sole face-to-face meeting in London on 18 February 2016.
But they also show the relationship began after Chris Jones, the SNP’s head of Information Systems, contacted CA the previous week.
At the time, CA were known to be working with the Leave campaign in the EU referendum.
In an email titled “Making Contact” on February 7, Mr Jones said: “I lead the voter identification and targeting strategy for the SNP and I’m keen to have a chat.”
After the SNP’s contact with CA was revealed at a Westminster committee last week, the party said a single “external consultant” had met the firm on its behalf.
READ MORE: Second key SNP figure caught up in Cambridge Analytica row
But the emails show Mr Jones and the SNP lawyer Scott Martin were also due to meet CA in London, but in the end only consultant Kirk J Torrance attended.
Mr Jones blamed a “major network outage” for stopping him making the trip.
CA sent the SNP a non-disclosure agreement before the meeting in the name of SCL elections, and later explained CA was a “US operating affiliate of SCL group”.
Mr Blackford said the SNP had refused to sign it.
After the meeting, the SNP blanked three follow-up emails from CA, but that Mr Jones spoke to the firm by telephone on 30 March 2016.
SCL operations executive Livia Krisandova emailed him the next day thanking him for “taking my call and discussing our potential cooperation in summer 2016; it was my pleasure to hear that you are still interested in working with SCL Group/Cambridge Analytica”.
She said talks had been “postponed and are due to be re-opened again” after the Holyrood election and EU referendum.
“We have agreed to re-connect in May, and then again in June,” she wrote.
READ MORE: SNP consultant who met Cambridge Analytica named as key figure in party's digital operations
However a follow-up CA email on May 26 appears to have been the last correspondence.
Mr Blackford said the SNP had written to the UK Information Commissioner about the links between CA and SCL, and provided her with all the documents.
He said: “To confirm again, the SNP has never worked with Cambridge Analytica, used any of its services or paid them a single penny.
“It’s time for other parties to face scrutiny over Cambridge Analytica’s continuing assertion to have ‘spoken with representatives of every major UK political party'.
“I have previously set out a number of links between the Tories and Cambridge Analytica that no one has yet answered. The PM has failed to say why AggregateIQ bosses were photographed on Downing Street. The focus now turns to unearthing the plethora of Tory ties to Cambridge Analytica, SCL Elections, and AggregateIQ."
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