Leak reveals Uber’s practices to expand at all costs

“Violence guarantees success.” “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” We are “fucking illegal”, are some of the phrases that top executives of Uber launched in different contexts but that frame the aggressiveness of the company to grow and expand through ethically questionable practices and bordering on the line of illegality.

In this new work of the non-profit organization ICIJ, more than 180 journalists from 44 media outlets in 29 countries around the world participated to reveal how Uber used “brute force” and countless questionable practices to roll out its ride-hailing services around the world.

The evidence shows that the transport company carried out all kinds of actions where it evaded the law and used different lobbying strategies in the highest spheres to rapidly implement its services in various nations between 2013 and 2017, when it was directed by Travis Kalanick.

The documents refer that 40 countries were targeted by Uber’s actions, where they claim they behaved like “pirates” courting prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, oligarchs and media moguls, with the aim of forcing favorable regulations to your interests.

Kalanick’s dealings reached more than 100 global leaders, with the participation and supervision of Uber’s political and legal groups: in 2016 alone, he spent $90 million on lobbying and “public relations.”

In United States, Uber provided gifts, rides, transportation, campaign support, meals at fancy restaurants, among other benefits to lawmakers and different political leaders of the Government to favor their requests.

Macron, mentioned in the ICIJ investigation

Among the top-level leaders mentioned in the documents meets French President Emmanuel Macronwho was an open supporter of Uber when he was Minister of the Economy, in the face of President François Hollande’s refusal.

According to the investigation, on October 1, 2014, Macron would have met with a group of Uber executives, including Travis Kalanick, in a secret meeting not documented in the official agenda. At that time, the now president did not hide his affinity with the transport company and argued that he could create many jobs for low-skilled people.

A total of 17 “significant exchanges” took place over 18 months between Macron accompanied by his advisers and Uber managers and four exclusive meetings between the then French minister and Kalanick, which over time allegedly helped the company’s full implementation in the country.

Uber’s tentacles to expand around the world

Meanwhile in Spain, the company lined up its artillery to a list with 131 names of key characters where they should aim their efforts, until approaching the then head of the Executive Mariano Rajoy.

In the United States, Joe Biden met in the framework of the World Economic Forum in Davos with Kalanick when he was vice president of Barack Obama, the president of the transport company even joked that he had told his people “to tell him that every minute that he is late is one minute less than he will be with me”.

Another of the names that stand out in the leaked documents is the participation of Neelies Kroes, former European Commissioner for Competition and Digital Agenda, who was approached after the 18-month period that the EU establishes for commissioners to be able to be part of companies .

“Our relationship with Neelie Kroes is highly confidential,” lobbyist Mark MacGann told his Uber partners in an email dated March 2015, just four months after Kroes had resigned from the commission. “Her name should never appear on a document,” they warned.

Uber: the end justifies the means

The company offered economically unsustainable services for its users, but which made it easier for them to control the market and encouraged the use of the application.

Among other strategies used and adapted depending on the country where they were, they resorted to social pressure; investigations of taxi drivers from traditional companies to find “relevant pejorative information”; prevent local inspectors from investigating company documents through computer tools such as Greyball and Kill switch, among others.

Uber encouraged its drivers to hold demonstrations to confront the mobilizations of taxi drivers who rejected the proliferation of the service, even inciting them to civil disobedience.

In one of the communications between Kalanick and his executives, it is shown how they were opposed to sending the drivers to the mobilizations due to the risk of violent confrontations, to which the president replied that “it was worth it… Violence guarantees success and these types must be confronted”, in another document he highlighted the importance of “use as a weapon” the workers and victimize them in the face of the aggressions they would receive “to feed the fire of controversy”.

However, a spokesman for Kalanick responded that the manager “never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety” and that any claim to that effect is totally false.

In addition, according to the ICIJ, the company would have created through an elaborate structure fictitious companies to evade taxes, these companies are controlled by their parent company Uber Technologies INC, which is based in Delaware, a state that is known to be a tax haven. within the United States.

One of the unofficial slogans of the Uber “growth” team was “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” and the board made it clear in one of the documents that the company was characterized as “fucking illegal” and “officially being pirates”.

Uber responds to the revelations and invites you not to look in the rearview mirror

Uber executives have stated that “we have not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly not consistent with our current values… We ask that you judge us on what we have done in the last five years and what we will do in the next years,” they said in a statement.

Jil Hazelbaker, one of the spokespersons for Uber, also pointed out to the ICIJ that the “mistakes and missteps” culminated five years ago in “one of the most shameful settling of accounts in the history of companies in the United States.”

The spokeswoman assured that since 2017 they radically changed their way of working after the publicized trials and investigations that generated the dismissal of Kalanick and other top executives.

“When we say that Uber is a different company today, it is literally so: 90% of current Uber employees came after Dara Khosrowshahi took over as CEO in 2017,” Hazelbaker said.

Uber was born in San Francisco, United States in 2009, in 2014 it spread to Europe choosing Amsterdam as its headquarters, motivated by the opportunities to evade taxes offered to transnational companies in the Netherlands.

Today, it is one of the world’s largest travel platform companies with a market value of $43 billion, making approximately 19 million trips daily.

With information from EFE and local media