Thousands of leaked documents have revealed the extent to which Uber evaded justice and courted prominent politicians.
They describe the significant assistance Uber received from world leaders such as Emmanuel Macron and former EU commissioner Neelie Kroes.
They also reveal that the former owner of the cab company personally ordered the installation of a “kill switch” to prevent police from accessing computers during raids.
Uber claims that its past actions were inconsistent with its current ideals and that it is now a “different organization.”
The Uber Files comprise around 124,000 documents, including 83,000 emails and 1,000 additional files about conversations from 2013 to 2017.
While French taxi drivers conducted sometimes violent protests against Uber, the current president, Emmanuel Macron, was on first-name terms with the controversial CEO of the company, Travis Kalanick, and told him he would modify regulations in the company’s favor.
Uber’s harsh business practices were well-known, but for the first time, the files provide an exclusive look at the extent the company went to achieve its aims.
They reveal that former EU digital commissioner Neelie Kroes, a key official in Brussels, was in talks to join Uber before the end of her tenure, and subsequently surreptitiously advocated for the company, perhaps in violation of EU ethics standards.
Uber was not only one of the world’s fastest-growing corporations at the time, but also one of the most contentious, plagued by court disputes, sexual harassment charges, and data breach scandals.
In 2017, Travis Kalanick was removed from his position as CEO of Uber by shareholders.
According to Uber, his replacement, Dara Khosrowshahi, was “tasked with reforming every area of how Uber functions” and has “implemented the stringent controls and compliance required to operate as a public company.”
‘Spectacular’ Macron aid
Uber’s initial European launch occurred in Paris when it was faced with significant opposition from the taxi industry, resulting in violent public riots.
In August 2014, Emmanuel Macron, an ambitious former banker, was appointed minister of the economy. He saw Uber as a source of expansion and desperately needed new jobs, so he was eager to assist.
In October of that year, he met with Mr. Kalanick and other executives and lobbyists, marking the beginning of a long, but little-publicized tenure as an advocate for the controversial company’s interests within the government.
Mark McGann, a lobbyist for Uber, characterized the encounter as “amazing. Like I’ve never seen, “The files display. Soon, we will dance, he added.
The archives indicate that “Emmanuel” and “Travis” met at least four times, including in Paris and at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Only the Davos meeting has been reported in the past.
At one time, Uber wrote to Mr. Macron expressing his gratitude. In government-industry relations, the openness and warmth with which we are greeted are rare.
The 2014 introduction of UberPop, a service that permitted unlicensed drivers to provide trips at much-reduced rates, infuriated French taxi drivers in particular.
Courts and lawmakers prohibited it, yet Uber continued to operate while challenging the law.
Mr. Macron did not see a future for UberPop, but he agreed to revise France’s regulations governing the firm’s other services in collaboration with the company.
“Uber will give a regulatory framework blueprint for ridesharing. We will link our respective teams to initiate work on a feasible plan that may serve as France’s formal framework “Travis Kalanick has sent Mr. Macron an email.
The protests turned violent on 25 June 2015, and a week later, Mr. Macron emailed Mr. Kalanick an apparent offer of assistance.
Next week, I will convene everyone to draught the change and amend the law.
Uber announced the suspension of UberPop in France the same day.
Months later, Mr. Macron approved legislation easing license requirements for Uber drivers.
Until today, the depth of the now-president of France’s involvement with the notorious worldwide corporation that violated French law remained unknown.
A spokesman for Mr. Macron stated in an email, “His functions naturally led him to meet and contact with numerous enterprises engaged in the dramatic change that emerged over those years in the service sector, which had to be assisted by removing administrative and regulatory barriers.”
Uber stated that the “suspension of UberPop was in no way followed by more favorable rules” and that a new law that went into effect in 2018 led to France adopting “stricter regulations” that were “in no way advantageous to Uber.”
The former regulator now a lobbyist
The files also suggest that Uber’s contact with one of Europe’s top officials, European Commission vice-president Neelie Kroes, began substantially earlier and extended significantly deeper than was previously known, placing her in apparent violation of regulations governing the behavior of commissioners.
She was in discussions to join Uber’s advisory board before leaving her final European position in November 2014.
EU regulations provide that commissioners must observe a “cooling-off” period, then 18 months, during which the commission must approve any new employment.
As a commissioner, Ms. Kroes oversaw digital and competition policies and was a prominent adversary of big tech, playing a key role in imposing hefty fines on Microsoft and Intel.
However, of all the companies she could have joined after leaving, Uber was the most controversial.
In her native Netherlands, the ridesharing service UberPop has caused legal and political problems.
In October 2014, Uber drivers were arrested, and in December of that year, a judge in The Hague outlawed UberPop and threatened fines of up to 100,000 euros. In March 2015, Dutch police searched Uber’s Amsterdam office.
According to emails, Ms. Kroes called ministers and other government officials to convince them to back down during the raid.
A week later, during another raid, Ms. Kroes again phoned a Dutch minister and, according to an email, “harassed” the head of the Dutch civil service.
An internal email instructed employees not to mention her informal contact with other parties: “Her reputation and our ability to negotiate solutions in the Netherlands and elsewhere would be harmed by any casual office chatter.”
The business wanted Ms. Kroes to relay signals to the office of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, according to the documents.
In October 2015, an email states, “We’ll establish a backchannel with Neelie and the PM’s Chief of Staff to gain maximum benefit by ‘giving’ them the impression of a success.”
She wrote to the EU’s Ad Hoc Ethical Committee and asked to commission president Jean-Claude Juncker for permission to join Uber’s advisory board before the 18-month limit expired.
This request was denied, but documents indicate that Ms. Kroes continued to provide informal assistance to the company until her employment was publicized shortly after the cooling-off period expired.
This demonstrates that Ms. Kroes was in “obvious violation” of the laws, according to Alberto Alemanno, professor of Jean Monnet European Union law at HEC Paris.
“You are establishing that you are doing something you are not permitted to do,” he said. “Because even if she didn’t necessarily ask for permission, you could say that there was a grey area, a grey zone. However, it is no longer present.”
In response to the disclosures of Ms. Kroes’ involvement with Uber, he stated, “It makes me feel that our system is probably not suitable for the purpose, as this situation should have been avoided.”
Ms. Kroes denies having held any “formal or informal position at Uber” before May 2016, when the cooling-off period ended.
She stated that as an EU commissioner, she interacted with several technological businesses “always based on what I believed to be in the public interest.”
During the cooling-off period, the Dutch government appointed her as a special envoy for start-ups, a position that required her to interact with a “vast array of business, government, and non-governmental entities” to promote a “business-friendly and welcoming ecosystem in the Netherlands,” as she explained.
In 2015, according to a representative for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Uber has not deemed a startup.
Uber reports that Ms. Kroes resigned from the advisory board in 2018 and that it has subsequently implemented new standards “strengthening oversight” of “lobbying and external engagements with lawmakers” in Europe.
“Activate the kill switch immediately”
Uber has a second line of defense, a “kill switch” that prevented law enforcement from accessing the company’s servers in the event of an investigation.
This would restrict officers’ access to key company information such as driver lists, which the corporation feared would hinder its expansion.
The files confirm earlier news stories concerning the death switch and demonstrate that Mr. Kalanick engaged the system at least once.
“Please deactivate the power immediately. Amsterdam must restrict access, “a message from his account indicates.
The kill switch was also utilized at least three times in Canada, Belgium, India, Romania, and Hungary, in addition to France.
Since the new CEO took over in 2017, Uber claims it has had no “‘kill switch’ meant to prevent regulatory inquiries anywhere in the world.”
A representative for Mr. Kalanick stated that he has never authorized any acts or programs that would impede justice in any country, and that any allegation to the contrary is incorrect. He stated that Uber “used mechanisms that safeguard their customers’ intellectual property and privacy” and that “these fail-safe methods do not delete any data or information and were approved by Uber’s legal and regulatory departments.”
