A leak of thousands of documents and an explosion for the behemoth of the VTC, Uber. The revelations published by our colleagues from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which includes the investigation unit of Radio France, and Le Monde are a staggering dive behind the scenes of the company between 2013 and 2017. In nearly five years, the group has developed an intensive lobby with political figures, hijacked the legislation of countries, exploited drivers, and tried to circumvent the judicial authorities. We take stock of this case.
124 00 documents
It all starts with the transmission of thousands of internal files of Uber by an anonymous source to the newspaper The Guardian, which then communicates these documents to the hundreds of journalists of the consortium. SMS, emails, Excel tables… these 124,000 documents dated from 2013 to 2017 expose the strategy of the giant of the VTC Uber to extend its empire.
This disclosure questions the ethics of the company, currently valued at 43 billion dollars (42 million euros). Recall that in 2015, a judicial investigation was launched against the group in France for “concealed work”. Relaunched in 2020, the investigation is still ongoing.
Emmanuel Macron, at the bedside of Uber
Among these revelations, the role played by Emmanuel Macron, at the head of the Ministry of the Economy between 2014 and 2016, sparked waves of indignation on the part of the opposition. In October 2014, the young Minister of the Economy met the leaders of Uber. This meeting will mark the beginnings of a privileged relationship between the future president and the American company. There will follow, as Le Monde notes, 17 daily exchanges in 18 months between the two parties.
The VTC giant and the Minister of the Economy would have, among other things, concluded a “win-win” agreement. The deal: stop the UberPop service, allowing anyone to become an unlicensed driver and covered at the time by legal procedures, in exchange for a simplification of the conditions necessary for a VTC license.
At the beginning of 2016, the government drastically reduced the duration of driver training, dropping from 250 hours… to just 7 hours. A relaxation of the legislation in exchange for stopping UberPop? The VTC giant defended itself to the World. He justifies this stop by the “level of violence targeting our users, drivers and passengers, which no longer allowed us to ensure their safety”.
Constant lobbying
“Frankly, the great Uber lobby team has done a tremendous job in the face of adversity. Cheer. This is how the teams of the world leader in VTC congratulate each other when French parliamentarians vote on amendments written by their lobbyists. The elements described by Le Monde show the means implemented by Uber to succeed in convincing elected officials to carry out the deregulation of the activity of VTC.
In January 2015, the company sent Luc Belot, socialist deputy for Maine-et-Loire, proposed amendments that he will modify slightly before tabling them. Emmanuel Macron will then rely on these texts to criticize the Thévenoud law which “has not found the right balance”.
“When the Minister of the Economy receives representatives of Uber through the back door, there is no possible traceability. What we are asking for is to know who is meeting who and to talk about what,” protested Parisian Béatrice Guillemont, director of the Anticor association.
The French teams of Uber have Excel files listing the profiles of all the political figures, both those who support them and those who scrutinize them. The group’s workforce in “public affairs”, as lobbying is modestly called, exploded. In 2016, Uber spent around 90 million dollars for these services, which increased in one year “from a few dozen to several hundred employees on the planet”, notes a French executive.
An assumed “strategy of chaos”
In 2014, a memo distributed to all of the group’s European executives details the group’s strategy: a “shitty pyramid” of legal proceedings. Trials of drivers, investigations, disputes… the group prefers to circumvent legislation than to comply with the law in order to impose itself on the market.
To carry out their policy, managers and employees do not hesitate to impose a “strategy of chaos” and to break the law. Travis Kalanick, then at the head of the American group, seems to consider violence and attacks against VTC drivers as beneficial for the image of the company.
On January 26, 2016, Parisian taxis denounce unfair competition and demonstrate against the excesses of VTCs. As Le Monde reveals, in an exchange of internal SMS, Travis Kalanick wishes to reply: “Civil disobedience. 15,000 drivers. 50,000 passengers. A peaceful march or a sit-in,” he wrote. “Violence guarantees success,” he would also have replied, once alerted to the presence of far-right thugs in the previous processions.
The group also uses the maneuver decried by lawyers of the “kill switch”. It is an “emergency stop button”, which instantly and remotely cuts off access to a company’s computers, documents and internal tools. Practical when the company is confronted with searches, granting itself the right to prevent the seizure of sensitive data. Uber acknowledges having deployed it in France. Contacted by our colleagues from Radio France, Travis Kalanick however assured by the voice of his lawyers: “ that he never authorized any action or program that obstructed justice”.
A strategy used all over the world
These same mechanisms are used by the ride-hailing company in around forty countries. This is even claimed by the leaders of Uber in the exchanges revealed by the ICIJ. Thus, Allen Penn, director in Asia of the platform, wrote in 2014, when the situation became tense with the Indian authorities: “We will probably have problems in all the cities… So get used to it (…) Embrace it. chaos. »
The Guardian also reveals that Uber’s leaders are aware of the fragility of their model and do not hesitate to laugh about it: “Sometimes we have problems because we are fucking illegal”, wrote the group’s global communications director. in 2014. The documents also say that Uber offered shares to “influential figures” in Russia, Italy and even Germany, making them “strategic investors”.
It remains to be seen what impact these revelations will have. According to Béatrice Guillemont, the general manager of the Anticor association, the facts reported are not really discoveries and above all some “may not be penalized even if they exist and undermine our institutions”.