According to a report released this Sunday, The ride-sharing service lobbied political leaders to relax labour and taxi laws aggressively and used a “kill switch” to thwart regulators and law enforcement. Uber also aggressively channelled money through Bermuda and other tax havens and even went as far as to consider portraying violence against its drivers as a way to gain public sympathy.
A nonprofit network of investigative reporters, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, sourced internal Uber texts, emails, invoices, and other documents to deliver what it named “an unprecedented look into the ways Uber defied taxi laws and upended workers’ rights.” The document was initially leaked to the British newspaper The Guardian, which was later shared with the consortium.
Uber spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker acknowledged the “mistakes” in the past in a written statement and said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, hired back 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.”
Uber sought to skirt taxi regulations and offer inexpensive transportation via a ride-sharing app. The consortium’s Uber Files revealed the extraordinary lengths that the company undertook to establish itself in nearly 30 countries.
The consortium also reported that Kalanick saw the threat of violence against Uber drivers in France by aggrieved taxi drivers as a way to gain public support. “Violence guarantees success,” Kalanick texted colleagues. In a response to the consortium, Kalanick spokesman Devon Spurgeon said the former CEO “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.’‘
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