‘Uber Files show how capital, influence and connections can bypass laws in democracies’

Dean Starkman: Our data shows how Uber assembled this lobbying juggernaut and was able to gain access to powerful, democratically-elected global leaders like former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron. Once you’re in the door, you’re halfway home, and it was able to influence and shape policy globally.

The second big point was that it was flouting local transportation and labour laws and running a business without a licence or permits. So, on the one hand, its officials were wining and dining with the leaders of Western democracies and, on the other hand, they were running an operation that was essentially rogue in most of these markets. This illustrated that there was something off in the way the democratic process was working and the advantage that capital, money, influence and connections had in liberal democracies. Another major revelation was while all this was going on, they were actually using stealth technology and other tactics to evade legitimate law enforcement inquiries. This protocol was called the kill switch. So when the law enforcement came knocking, and they often did with subpoenas, Uber had a protocol to shut down the access of the local office to the main services and thwart law enforcement. It did this in Paris, Amsterdam and in India as well. It was a playbook for evading a legitimate law enforcement investigation. Uber went to great lengths to gain access to the Russian market, made intricate financial deals with Russian billionaires and oligarchs with the explicit intent of influencing the political system.

On how The Guardian sourced data

David Pegg: The data was provided by a whistleblower named Mark MacGann because he thought these were things that needed to be brought to public attention. He approached us via an intermediary. Mark was effectively the head of Uber’s lobbying operation in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa for about two years, from 2014 to 2016. He was charged with contacting politicians, Ministers and very senior figures in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  Mark’s responsibility was to liaise with politicians and lobby them for taxi regulation to be changed or updated so that Uber’s operations would be legal. He did this for around two years but left the company in 2016 or 2017.

On Uber’s damage control exercise in India after a woman passenger was raped by a cab driver in 2014

Ritu Sarin: The documents were from 2013 to 2017 and covered the rape incident in December 2014. It was the aftermath of the rape incident and what happened legally in the US that made the story current and exciting  for us. When the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) offered us the Uber story, I thought it would be a corporate scam but the rape incident made it a news story.

There was this document in which Uber officials talked about how they should stop the “pandemic of violence” against women in India. Then there was another email from around the same period in which a top Indian executive of Uber is debriefing his entire team on how to handle the India assignment, asking them to “embrace the chaos.” He also told his teammates that should the government or regulators approach them, they should ignore them and not talk without taking the company’s prior permission. He asked them to forget controversies, focus on the market and keep growing bigger. Then came the rape after which Uber was in a state of panic. If you recall, Uber was banned in the capital for a few months and the emails show how the company was fearing that the ban might extend to other cities as well. That whole damage control exercise after the rape is unveiled in the Uber files and they deployed the kill switch.  The Uber files are the most authoritative documentation of 13 instances when the kill switch was used. In the case of India, the details in the documents are not as expansive as, say they are in Paris or Brussels, but there is a very telling email. A very senior Uber executive has been recorded telling his staff — it’s actually a boast — that “what we’ve done in New Delhi is to make the local officers or local executives seem to be very cooperative but actually we’ve shut down the systems.”

On Uber’s claims that it is a changed company

Dean Starkman: This is a problematic argument for Uber to make because it wouldn’t have achieved this global dominance were it not for the tactics that it used. The question isn’t whether there should or shouldn’t be ride sharing or hailing. All these are misnomers for taxi service but basically, it’s how they achieve this and the degree to which they were able to disrupt and distort local labour markets. Our documents dealt with the 2013 to 2017 period. So, we don’t know if this is a reformed company as they say. We’ll just have to take their word for it for the time being.

Having said that, the fact is that they disrupted local labour protection as it existed before. So now you’re dealing with a market where the price for a taxi ride has been dramatically undercut. Now that’s great for consumers but it basically shifts costs and negative externalities onto both Uber drivers and their competitors. It also leaves the local municipalities to clean up after Uber. I think we’re still in a place where we’re trying to figure out whether Uber drivers and other taxi drivers should be paid a living wage, enjoy normal benefits of other full-time employees, get labour protection, should be insured and whether or not frankly the true cost of a taxi ride is reflected in the Uber fare.

On whistleblower Mark MacGann’s ongoing legal dispute with Uber

David Pegg: Mark, when he left Uber in 2017, did so on fairly uncontroversial terms but later became involved in the dispute with the company over money. He said it owes him. What precisely has influenced somebody to come forward and to what extent do they have an axe to grind, and to what extent they’re angry at the person that they’re providing information about – this is not unique to the Uber files but all kinds of investigation. How we balanced that as journalists is that we primarily told the story relying on the data.

On the regulatory problems Uber faced in India

Ritu Sarin: It has been a regulatory mess for them from the time they came in and they’ve been like a sledgehammer with our regulations. When Uber came to India, it was paying the drivers through another company via the Netherlands. There were complaints to the RBI and Uber was forced to change rules and get some licences, one of the first important markets where they were forced to do so.

There were service tax issues again which they were evading. In fact, there are PPTs in the data where they are boasting about the manner of stalling queries. Coming to 2017, it ran into a lot of issues with the tax department, which are still pending. There are cases against Uber before consumer courts and there are around 700 complaints, which have all been bunched up and are being heard by the Central Consumer Protection Authority. There is a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), in the Supreme Court, not only for Uber but for other aggregators as well.

Audience Questions

On whether Uber violated Indian laws and whether the government is taking any action

Ritu Sarin: Service tax has now become GST and when we did the story, there was a complaint against Uber for an outstanding amount of Rs 827 crore for not having paid GST. About the privacy issue, the ground rules are very clear. The data remains only with the journalists working on the project – they are not to be shared with anyone in the government or outside the core group.

David Pegg: As for going after those people and giving it all over to the government, it would damage journalism. We are independent and we have to preserve that independence.

On having a law for the operation of taxi services in India

Ritu Sarin: Different countries have different laws and even in our country, different states have different rules and regulations. So there really cannot be one omnipotent law that guides aggregators.

Dean Starkman: Well, I would also say the laws are there already, all you have to do is enforce them.