Three of Meta’s top executives, including Clegg, have been named in a lawsuit in California (Picture: Lino Mirgeler/dpa)
A legal slipup has revealed Sir Nick Clegg has been accused of taking bribes from porn site OnlyFans.
The ex-deputy prime minister now works high up at Meta, the tech giant behind Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.
He was accidentally named, along with two other executives, in a California lawsuit alleging Meta took bribes from OnlyFans to give it an unfair advantage over rivals.
Sir Nick’s name was unredacted in a new court document that identified him as one of a trio of ‘John Does’ in the original lawsuit.
The court filing alleges Meta employees were sent wire transfers through an OnlyFans subsidiary. However, the authenticity of the transfers hasn’t been verified yet.
In February, porn stars launched the initial lawsuit (with Clegg’s name not mentioned) alleging OnlyFans bribed Meta, to block competitors on the app – by flagging their content as terrorism.
A legal slipup has revealed that Nick Clegg has been accused of taking bribes to block OnlyFans competitors on Facebook (Picture: AP)
The as-yet-unnamed Meta employees were accused of working under the table to secretly aid OnlyFans by getting its competitors ‘blacklisted’ online.
Last week, an attorney for the entertainers introduced what they claimed were copies of wire transfers provided by an anonymous tipster.
The wire transfer documents supposedly point to funds going to two trust accounts in the Philippines under Meta executives’ names. A third account, the documents say, was opened in the name of a ‘high-ranking Facebook executive’s young son’.
OnlyFans is an internet content subscription service used primarily by sex workers who produce pornography (Picture: Getty)
Both Meta and OnlyFans have denied the claims calling them ‘meritless’.
‘As we make clear in our motion to dismiss, we deny these allegations as they lack facts, merit, or anything that would make them plausible. The allegations are baseless,’ a Meta spokesperson said.
Lawyers representing OnlyFans’ parent company, Fenix Internet, LLC, said in a subsequent filing Wednesday that it had exposed the identities of Meta’s executives by mistake.
The names of the employees were ‘inadvertently unredacted’ it said while asking the court to delete the document.
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He was one of the three Meta executives accidentally named in a California lawsuit.