The former head of Cambridge Analytica admitted on Wednesday his firm had received data from the researcher at the center of a scandal over Facebook users' personal details, contradicting previous testimony to lawmakers.

Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by Donald Trump in 2016, has denied its work on the U.S. president's successful election campaign made use of data allegedly improperly harvested from around 87 million Facebook users.

Former chief Alexander Nix, in earlier testimony to Parliament's media committee, also denied the political consultancy had ever been given data by Aleksandr Kogan, the researcher linked to the scandal.