US lawmakers want Facebook's Zuckerberg to testify on Libra by January

Lawmakers in the U.S. want Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Facebook, to testify on the Libra stablecoin project by January.

A congressional source told Reuters in a report published Friday that the House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, wants Zuckerberg to commit to appearing in a hearing by the time.

Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has also tentatively agreed to testify before the committee on Oct. 29 about the project, but the committee will not schedule a hearing until Zuckerberg commits, per the report.

Last week, there were reports that Facebook is negotiating details with the committee for a hearing with Sandberg in late October or later in the year.

In July, Facebook executive and Libra co-creator David Marcus testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and faced intense criticism for the project. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, for instance, called Facebook “dangerous” and unworthy of Americans’ trust. Other lawmakers called for a halt in the development of the proposed stablecoin.

Earlier this week, in a leaked audio recording from an internal Facebook meeting, Zuckerberg said that public hearings "tend to be a little more dramatic," while private meetings with various regulators around the world are often "more substantive and less dramatic."