Dylan Bettencourt
Uber Technologies broke several laws and lobbied politicians during its expansion efforts between 2013 and 2017, a wide scale Guardian investigation has revealed.
Leaked documents showed the company secretly lobbied for political support from French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as several other top politicians around the world.
The leaks, labelled “Uber Files”, is formed of over 124,000 documents which show the legal grey areas the company entered in its rise to global taxi supremacy.
The documents showed that Uber worked with the French government to alter the law that made it difficult for Uber drivers to be licensed, angering the taxi industry.
They also showed that Uber deliberately put its drivers in potentially dangerous situations in 2016 to gain public sympathy.
In an exchange between Uber founder Travis Kalanick and Macron, the founder suggested it was “worth it” to send its drivers to the protest despite the threat of violence.
“Violence guarantees success,” Kalanick wrote in a leaked email exchange.
The leaks further suggest that Uber was aware that it was operating illegally in several countries, including South Africa.
“We are not legal in many countries, we should avoid making antagonistic statements,” a senior executive member wrote in an email.
Kalanick has also been charged in the past for accusations that he paid hackers close to R2 million to cover up an incident in which Uber stole personal information from around 57 million Uber users and drivers in 2016.
Reports from Uber drivers in the past have suggested a toxic work environment that involves sexual abuse, racial discrimination and bullying.
Uber released a statement without denying the allegations but instead claimed several instances have been changed since Dara Khosrowshahi was named CEO in 2017.
“There has been no shortage of reporting on Uber’s mistakes prior to 2017,” the San Francisco-based company said in a statement.
“Thousands of stories have been published, multiple books have been written, there’s even been a TV series.”
Uber claims that the revelations were public knowledge but following the takeover by Khosrowshahi, everything changed.
“When we say Uber is a different company today, we mean it literally: 90% of current Uber employees joined after Dara became CEO,” the statement explained.
Image source: @BusinessInsider
