The Uber Files reveal how the taxi company found ways around laws and lobbied with governments during its global expansion.
What are the Uber files?
The Uber Files are a leak of 182 GB of data that were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a nonprofit network of investigative reporters.
The dump comprises 124,000 records from the 2013-17 period — mostly internal company emails, memos, presentations, and WhatsApp messages.
According to the report, when Uber was aggressively expanding into global markets, it lobbied political leaders to relax labor and taxi laws, used a “kill switch″ to thwart regulators and law enforcement, channeled money through tax havens, and considered portraying violence against its drivers as a way to gain public sympathy.
Additionally, Uber spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker, in a written statement acknowledged the company’s previous “mistakes”. He stated that CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, hired in 2017, had been “tasked with transforming every aspect of how Uber operates … When we say Uber is a different company today, we mean it literally: 90% of current Uber employees joined after Dara became CEO.″
More on the Uber files
ICIJ’s Uber files reveal the lengths the firm took to establish itself in almost 30 nations. Additionally, the Uber files show that the firm’s lobbyists pressed officials to drop their investigations, and rewrite taxi and labor laws in addition to relaxing background checks for the drivers. The investigation found that Uber used “stealth technology″ to fend off government investigations. The company, for example, used a “kill switch″ that cut access to Uber servers and blocked authorities from grabbing evidence during raids in at least six countries. (goldchannel.net)
The Uber Files reported, that former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick personally issued an order: “Please hit the kill switch ASAP … Access must be shut down in AMS (Amsterdam)″.
Kalanick also texted his colleagues about how “violence guarantees success″. The former CEO saw the threat of violence against Uber drivers in France by aggrieved taxi drivers as a way to gain public support. In response to the report, Devon Spurgeon, Kalanic’s spokesperson stated that Kalanick “never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety″.
The Uber Files say the company cut its tax bill by millions of dollars by sending profits through Bermuda and other tax havens, then “sought to deflect attention from its tax liabilities by helping authorities collect taxes from its drivers.″
