Uber has been bribing the police and manipulating the facts for years, with prominent politicians covering for it.

Confidential file leak reveals inside story of how tech giant Uber flouted the law, defrauded police, used violence against drivers and covertly lobbied during its aggressive global expansion. TheGuardian.

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The unprecedented leak of more than 124 documents, known as Uber files, exposes the ethically questionable practices that helped make the company one of Silicon Valley's most famous exports.

The leak covers a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick, who was trying to roll out taxi service to cities around the world, even if it meant violating taxi laws and regulations.

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The data shows that during a tough global backlash, Uber tried to garner support, quietly courting prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, oligarchs and media moguls.

The leaked reports show Uber executives at the same time had no illusions about the company breaking the law, with one executive joking that they had become "pirates" while another admitted, "We're just fucking illegal."

On July 11, Mark McGann, Uber's former chief lobbyist for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, identified himself as the source of the data leak. “It is my duty to speak out and help governments and parliamentarians correct some fundamental mistakes,” he said. “Morally, I had no choice in the matter.”

The file cache, which spans from 2013 to 2017, includes more than 83 emails, iMessages and WhatsApp messages, including often explicit and unvarnished messages between Kalanick and his senior management team.

In one conversation, Kalanick dismissed other executives' concerns that sending Uber drivers to protest in France puts them at risk of violence from angry adversaries in the taxi industry.

“I think it’s worth it,” he retorted. “Violence guarantees success.”

In a statement, Kalanick's spokesman said he "never suggested Uber use violence at the expense of driver safety" and any suggestion that he was involved in such activities would be completely false.

The leak also contains correspondence between Kalanick and Emmanuel Macron, who secretly helped the company in France when he was economy minister, allowing Uber to contact him and his employees often and directly.

Macron, the French president, appeared to have gone to great lengths to help Uber, even telling the company that he had struck a secret "deal" with its opponents in the French cabinet.

In private, Uber executives expressed thinly disguised contempt for other elected officials less receptive to the company's business model.

After German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was mayor of Hamburg at the time, took a stand against Uber lobbyists and insisted on paying drivers the minimum wage, an executive told colleagues he was "a real comedian."

When then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, an Uber supporter at the time, was late for a meeting with company representatives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Kalanick wrote to his colleague: “My people informed him that every minute he was late meant that he would I have one minute less.

After meeting with Kalanick, Biden appeared to change his scripted Davos speech to mention a CEO whose company will give millions of workers "the freedom to work the hours they want, manage their lives the way they want."

The Guardian conducted a global investigation into the Uber file leak, sharing the data with media around the world through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). More than 180 journalists from 40 outlets including Le Monde, Washington Post and BBC will publish a series of reports on the tech giant in the coming days.

In a statement in response to the leak, Uber acknowledged "mistakes and miscalculations" but said the company had been transformed since 2017 under its current chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi.

“We have not and will not condone past behavior that is clearly inconsistent with our current values,” it said. “Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we have done over the past five years and what we will do in the coming years.”

A spokesperson for Kalanick said that Uber's expansion initiatives "have been led by over a hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and have been under the direct supervision and full approval of Uber's trusted legal, policy and compliance teams at all times."

"Accept Chaos"

The leaked documents shed light on the methods Uber used to build its empire. Uber, one of the world's largest work platforms, is currently a $43 billion company with about 19 million trips a day.

The files cover Uber's operations in 40 countries during the period when the company became a global giant, aggressively hosting its taxi service in many of the cities it still operates in.

From Moscow to Johannesburg, funded by unprecedented venture capital, Uber heavily subsidized rides, enticing drivers and riders to use the app with incentives and pricing models that were not sustainable.

Uber is disrupting established taxi markets and pressuring governments to rewrite laws to help pave the way for the app-driven operating model that has since spread around the world.

In a bid to quell the backlash against the company and push for changes to taxi and labor laws, Uber planned to spend an extraordinary $2016 million in 90 on lobbying and public relations, according to one document.

His strategy has often been to get over the heads of mayors and transportation authorities straight to power.

In addition to meeting Biden in Davos, Uber executives met face-to-face with Macron, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and George Osborne, then British Chancellor. A note from the meeting depicts Osborne as a "resolute defender".

In a statement, Osborne said the government's policy at the time was to meet with global technology firms and "persuade them to invest in the UK and create jobs here."

While a Davos meeting with Osborne was announced, data shows that six UK Conservative cabinet ministers had meetings with Uber that were not made public. It is not clear if meetings were to be announced, exposing confusion over how lobbying rules are applied in the UK.

The documents indicate that Uber was able to find informal paths to power, exert influence through friends or intermediaries, or seek meetings with politicians that were not attended by aides and officials.

He enlisted the support of powerful figures in places like Russia, Italy and Germany, offering them valuable financial stakes in a startup and turning them into "strategic investors."

And in an attempt to shape the political debate, it has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to eminent scientists to conduct research that supports the company's claims about the benefits of its economic model.

Despite a well-funded and persistent lobbying operation, Uber's efforts have had mixed results. In some places, Uber was able to convince governments to rewrite laws, with long-term consequences. But elsewhere, the company has faced blockages from the entrenched taxi industry, dominance from local taxi hailing competitors, or opposition from left-wing politicians who simply refuse to budge.

Faced with opposition, Uber has tried to use it to its advantage, seizing on it to fuel tales that its technology is destroying antiquated transportation systems and urging governments to reform their laws.

When Uber launched in India, Kalanick's top executive in Asia urged managers to focus on driving growth even as "fires start to break out." “Know that this is a normal part of Uber's business,” he said. - Embrace chaos. It means you're doing something meaningful."

Kalanick appeared to put that ideal into action in January 2016, when Uber's attempts to turn markets in Europe led to angry protests in Belgium, Spain, Italy and France by taxi drivers who feared for their livelihoods.

Amid taxi strikes and riots in Paris, Kalanick ordered French leaders to retaliate, calling on Uber drivers to organize a counter-protest with massive civil disobedience.

Warning that it could put Uber drivers at risk of attacks from “far-right thugs” who had infiltrated taxi protests and were “preparing for a fight,” Kalanick appeared to encourage his team to move forward no matter what. “I think it’s worth it,” he said. — Violence guarantees success. And these guys need to be resisted, no? I agree, we need to think about the right place and time.”

The decision to send Uber drivers to the potentially volatile protests, despite the risks, was in line with what a former senior executive told the Guardian it was a strategy to "weaponize" the drivers and use violence against them to "keep the controversy going."

It was a scenario that, according to the leaked emails, was repeated in Italy, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

When masked men who were reported to be irate taxi drivers attacked Uber drivers with brass knuckles and a hammer in Amsterdam in March 2015, Uber employees tried to use this to their advantage to extract concessions from the Dutch government.

The victim drivers were asked to file a police report, which was passed on to De Telegraaf, a leading Dutch daily newspaper. They "will be published without our fingerprints on the front page tomorrow," one manager wrote. “We keep the topic of violence going for a few days before offering a solution,” he wrote.

A spokesman for Kalanick questioned the authenticity of some of the documents. She said that Kalanick "never suggested that Uber use violence at the expense of driver safety" and any suggestion that he was involved in such activities would be "completely false."

An Uber spokesman also acknowledged the company's past mistakes in treating drivers, but said no one, including Kalanick, intended violence against Uber drivers. “Our former CEO said almost a decade ago what we certainly won’t tolerate today,” he said. “But one thing we do know and feel strongly about is that no one at Uber has ever been comfortable with violence against a driver.”

"Murder Switch"

Uber drivers have undoubtedly been the target of vicious assaults and sometimes murders by angry taxi drivers. And in some countries, taxi calling apps have run into established and monopolized taxi fleets with close relationships with city governments. Uber often characterized its opponents in the regulated taxi markets as "cartel" operators.

Privately, however, Uber executives and employees appeared to have little doubt about the often fraudulent nature of their own activities.

In internal emails, employees cited Uber's "illegal status" or other forms of active non-compliance in countries including Turkey, South Africa, Spain, the Czech Republic, Sweden, France, Germany and Russia.

One senior executive wrote in an email: "We are illegal in many countries, we should avoid antagonistic statements." Commenting on the tactics the company was willing to use to "avoid coercion," another executive wrote, "We are officially pirates."

Nairi Khurdajian, head of global communications at Uber, put it even more directly in a 2014 email to a colleague when the company was trying to shut down the company in Thailand and India: “Sometimes we get in trouble because we’re just fucking illegal.”

A spokesman for Kalanick accused reporters of "imposing a false agenda" that he was "in charge of illegal or improper activities."

An Uber spokesperson said that when Uber started, "sharing regulations didn't exist anywhere in the world," and transportation laws were outdated for the smartphone age.

Around the world, police, transportation officials, and regulators have sought to shut down Uber. In some cities, officials downloaded the app and ran rides to crack down on unlicensed taxi rides, fine Uber drivers and confiscate their cars. Uber offices in dozens of countries have been repeatedly raided by the authorities.

Against this backdrop, Uber has developed sophisticated methods to thwart law enforcement. One of them was known inside Uber as the "off switch". When the Uber office was ransacked, company executives frantically sent out instructions to IT staff to cut off access to the company's key data systems to prevent authorities from gathering evidence.

The leaked files suggest the technique, signed by Uber lawyers, was used at least 12 times in raids in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, India, Hungary and Romania.

A spokesman for Kalanick said such "kill shutdown" protocols are common business practice and are not intended to obstruct justice. She said the protocols that did not delete data were reviewed and approved by Uber's legal department, and the former Uber CEO was never charged with obstruction of justice or a related offence.

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An Uber spokesperson said its kill software "should never have been used to prevent legitimate regulatory action" and the company ended use of the system in 2017 when Khosrowshahi replaced Kalanick as CEO.

Another executive who, according to the leaked files, was involved in the shutdown protocols was Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Cauty, who ran Uber's operations in Western Europe. He now runs Uber Eats and is part of the company's 11-member leadership team.

Gore-Koti said in a statement that he regrets "some of the tactics that were used to reform regulation for car sharing in the early days." In retrospect, he said: "I was young and inexperienced and too often followed the instructions of superiors with questionable ethics."

Politicians are now also facing questions about whether they followed the directions of Uber executives.

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