As Uber aggressively pushed markets around the world, the shared travel service pressured world leaders to relax labor and taxi laws, used a “kill switch” to hide evidence and frustrate the law enforcement and channeled money through Bermuda and other tax havens, according to a report released overnight.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nonprofit network of investigative journalists, searched thousands of text messages, emails, invoices and other internal documents from Uber to offer what it called “a look without precedents on the ways Uber challenged taxi laws and altered workers’ rights. ” .
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has recently been re-elected, has been named a key world leader in supporting Uber during its aggressive push into the market. Credit: AP
The documents were first leaked to the British newspaper The Guardian, which shared them with the consortium.
Founded in 2009, Uber tried to circumvent taxi regulations and offer affordable transportation through a shared travel app. The consortium’s “Uber Files” reveal the extraordinary durations the company pledged to establish in nearly 30 countries, during the period when it was run by co-founder and then CEO Travis Kalanick.
His lobbyists, including former aides to President Barack Obama, pressured government officials to abandon their investigations, rewrite labor and taxi laws, and relax drivers ’background checks, newspapers show.
French President Emmanuel Macron was identified as a key ally when he was France’s finance minister, according to the investigation, and Uber executives contacted him regularly for help.
In a written statement. Uber spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker acknowledged “mistakes” in the past and said current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, hired in 2017, had been “tasked with transforming all aspects of how Uber operates. “When we say Uber is a different company today, we mean it. Literally: 90 percent of Uber’s current employees joined after Dara became CEO.”
The investigation found that Uber used stealth technology to defend government investigations, including a “slaughter switch” that cut off access to Uber’s servers and prevented authorities from collecting evidence in raids in at least six countries. During a police raid in Amsterdam, the consortium reported that Kalanick personally issued an order: “Please press the slaughter switch as soon as possible … Access must be closed in AMS (Amsterdam) “.
France was the scene of Uber’s first European launch and met with strong resistance from the taxi industry which turned into violent protests in 2015. Macron, pro-business, was one of the world’s influential figures, including former EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes, to offer her help to the new company, the consortium reported.