On Monday, July 11th, The Guardian reported that it came into the possession of approximately 124,000 leaked Uber documents that reveal the practices used by the company to accelerate its growth. The documents cover a period of five years, between 2013 and 2017, during which the company was led by Travis Kalanick, its co-founder, and include message exchanges on various platforms between Kalanick and his executive team.
The documents show that, during that time, Uber tried to bend laws, sabotage the taxi industry and get under the skin of high-ranking politicians and wealthy people with influence from various countries in order to expand their services. Among the high-profile names circulated in the leaks are US president, Joe Biden, former British Secretary of State, George Osborne, German chancellor, Olaf Scholz and French president, Emmanuel Macron.
After analyzing the leaked information, the media exposed all sorts of practices meant to drive Uber’s ascension into various European countries. The company allegedly struck a deal with French President Emmanuel Macron, who agreed to modify certain laws in order to help Uber expand in France. Paris was the first European city in which the ride-sharing company was launched and the representatives of the taxi industry did not receive it well. The launch led to violent protests, taxi drivers being unhappy with the fact that Uber continued running although it had been banned, but also because the prices of the rides they offered were much lower than taxi fares. At the same time, Kalanick allegedly endangered the company’s own drivers by encouraging them to participate in the protests.
However, Kalanick’s spokesperson declared for CNN and for International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, to which the documents were made available, that the Uber co-founder
never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of rider safety.
The leaked files also show that, during the same time, former EU digital commissioner, Neelie Kroes, secretly promoted the company and accepted to join the Uber team at the end of her term, in a potential unethical behavior within the EU ranks.
Moreover, the company is believed to have used a “kill switch” that prevented certain data from reaching law enforcement during their investigations. This tactic was used in countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Romania, Hungary and India. However, Uber’s spokesperson declared that this action was legal and had no malicious intent behind it.
The leaked documents continue to reveal the company’s dubious practices used in more than forty countries in the span of five years, time during which Uber became very powerful globally. According to one of the documents, paraphrased by The Guardian, in order to achieve its major expansion plans and bypass existing legislation that could hinder its progress,
In a bid to quell the fierce backlash against the company and win changes to taxi and labor laws, Uber planned to spend an extraordinary $90m in 2016 on lobbying and public relations.
Uber representatives officially stated that the company has changed very much since the period covered by the leaked documents and that they do not endorse or maintain such practices.
According to CNN, Jill Hazelbaker, the spokesperson of the company, declared that
We have not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly not in line with our present values.
At the same time, Hazelbaker stated that more than ninety percent of the company’s current staff was hired after the 2017 change of leadership, when Kalanick resigned from Uber.
Even so, it seems that the company will not be able to escape its past so easily, as more of its borderline legal practices are beginning to surface.