Uber files: Leaked documents reveal no-holds-barred expansion approach

Popular ride-sharing app Uber has come under intense scrutiny after a raft of leaked confidential files highlighted the company’s potentially illegal tactics in fueling its meteoric global expansion that began nearly a decade ago, a joint media investigation recently revealed.

Dubbed the “Uber files,” the investigation, based on 124,000 records and involving dozens of news organizations, found that early in the San Francisco-based company’s history as it sought to conquer new markets, company officials sometimes took advantage of fierce a backlash by the taxi industry against drivers to garner support and avoid regulatory authorities.

Uber in a statement admitted “mistakes” but blamed previous management under former CEO Travis Kalanick, who was forced to resign in 2017 following revelations accusing him of brutal management practices and multiple episodes of sexual and psychological harassment at the company. .

“We have moved from an era of confrontation to an era of cooperation, demonstrating a willingness to sit at the table and find common ground with former adversaries, including unions and taxi companies,” it said.

The investigation found that Uber’s subsidized drivers and cut fares threatened the taxi industry, with the company’s drivers facing brutal retaliation, including protests in Paris in 2016.

“In some cases where drivers were attacked, Uber executives quickly turned to profit” to seek public and regulatory support in entering new markets, “often without seeking licenses to operate as a taxi and livery service,” reports Washington Post, one of the media outlets involved in the investigation.

Kalanick called for a counter-protest in Paris and appeared to suggest that violence would help the cause in a text to other officials that said: “Violence guarantees success.” Kalanick denies the findings, with a spokesman saying he “never suggested that Uber should profit from violence at the expense of driver safety” and that he “has never authorized actions or programs that would obstruct justice in any country’.

The investigation also accuses Uber of working to avoid regulatory investigations by using a technological advantage, the Post reported, describing an instance in which Kalanick deployed a “kill switch” to remotely cut off access of devices in an Amsterdam office to the company’s internal systems. Uber as regulators under attack.

Another finding, according to the Post, shows that between 2014 and 2016, Uber found an ally in France’s then-economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, now the country’s president, who the company believed would encourage regulators “to be “less conservative” in their interpretation of rules limiting the company’s activities.”