Uber files: How top politicians like Macron and European officials lobbied for the company

Thousands of leaked files have revealed how Uber approached top politicians and the lengths it went to avoid justice.

The files, the BBC reports, detail the extensive help Uber received from leaders such as Emmanuel Macron and former EU commissioner Neelie Kroes.

They also show how the former head of the taxi company personally ordered the use of a “kill switch” to prevent raiding police from accessing the computers.

Uber says its “past behavior was inconsistent with its current values” and that it is a “different company” today.

Uber’s archives are a “treasure trove” of more than 124,000 files, including 83,000 emails and 1,000 other files related to conversations, spanning the period 2013-2017.

They were leaked to the Guardian and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and various media organisations, including BBC Panorama. They reveal, for the first time, how a $90m-a-year lobbying and PR effort recruited friendly politicians to help its campaign to disrupt the European taxi industry.

While French taxi drivers staged sometimes violent street protests against Uber, Macron – who is now president – was on the best of terms with controversial Uber boss Travis Kalanick and told him he would reform laws in favor of the company.

Uber’s ruthless business methods were well known, but for the first time the files give a unique inside look at the measures it took to achieve its goals.

They show how former EU digital policy commissioner Neelie Kroes, one of Brussels’ top officials, was in talks to join Uber before her term ended – and then secretly lobbied for the company, potentially breaching its ethics rules EU.

At the time, Uber wasn’t just one of the fastest-growing companies in the world — it was one of the most controversial, beset by lawsuits, sexual harassment allegations and data breach scandals.

Eventually, shareholders grew tired of these actions and Travis Kalanick was ousted in 2017.

Uber says his replacement, Dara Khosrowshahi, “took it upon himself to transform every aspect of how Uber operates” and “installed the rigorous controls and compliance required to operate as a public company.”

Macron’s “spectacular” help

Paris was the scene of Uber’s first European launch and met with strong opposition from the taxi industry, culminating in violent street protests.

In August 2014, an ambitious former banker, Emmanuel Macron had just been appointed finance minister. He saw Uber as a source of growth and needed new jobs and was eager to help.

That October, he held a meeting with Kalanick and other executives and lobbyists that marked the start of a long—but little-publicized—tenure as a champion of the controversial company’s interests in government.

Uber lobbyist Mark MacGann described the meeting as “spectacular. Like I’ve never seen before,” the filings show. “We’ll be dancing soon,” he added.

“Emmanuel” and “Travis” were soon chatting using their first names and met at least four times, records show, in Paris and at the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland. Only the Davos meeting was previously announced.

At one point Uber wrote to Mr Macron that it was “extremely grateful”. “The openness and welcome we receive is unusual in government-industry relations.”

French taxi drivers were particularly outraged by the 2014 launch of UberPop – a service that allowed unlicensed drivers to offer rides at much lower prices.

The courts and parliament banned it, but Uber continued to operate the service as it challenged the law.

Macron did not believe there was a future for UberPop, but agreed to work with the company to change French laws governing its other services.

“Uber will provide an outline for a regulatory framework for shared journeys. We will connect our respective teams to start working on a feasible proposal that could become the official framework in France,” he said in an email. Travis Kalanick to Mr Macron.

On June 25, 2015, the protests turned violent, and a week later Macron texted Kalanick with an apparent offer of help.

“[Εγώ] I will bring them all together next week to prepare the reform and fix the law”. The same day, Uber announced the suspension of UberPop in France. Months later Macron signed a decree relaxing the licensing requirements for its drivers Uber.

The extent of France’s current president’s relationship with the controversial global company that operated in violation of French law has not been revealed until now.

A spokesman for Macron said in an email: “His duties naturally led him to meet and interact with many companies dealing with the sharp change that has occurred during these years in the services sector, which had to be facilitated by the unlocking of administrative and regulatory obstacles”.

The commissioner who lobbied for Uber

The files also reveal how Uber’s relationship with one of Europe’s top officials, former European Commission vice-president Neelie Kroes, began significantly earlier and ran deeper than previously known, putting it in clear breach of the rules govern the conduct of commissioners.

They reveal she was in talks to join Uber’s advisory board even before she left her last European post in November 2014.

EU rules say commissioners must observe a “cooling off” period, then 18 months, during which new jobs require Commission approval.

As commissioner, Kroes oversaw digital and competition policy and was a high-profile challenger to big tech, playing a leading role in massive fines against Microsoft and Intel.

But of all the companies she could have worked for after leaving, Uber was a particularly controversial choice.

In Kroes’ home country of Holland, the UberPop service has also caused legal and political problems. Uber drivers were arrested in October 2014 and in December of that year, a judge in The Hague banned UberPop, threatening fines of up to €100,000. In March 2015, Dutch police raided Uber’s offices in Amsterdam.

The emails show that Ms Kroes called ministers and other members of the government to persuade them to back down during the raid. During another raid a week later, Kroes again contacted a Dutch minister, Uber records show, and, in the words of one email, “harassed” the head of Dutch government services.

An internal email advised staff not to discuss her informal relationship outside: “Her reputation and our ability to negotiate solutions in the Netherlands and elsewhere will be severely damaged by any casual teasing inside or outside the office.”

The records show the company wanted Kroes to deliver messages to the office of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

In October 2015, an email states: “We will be backchanneling with Neelie and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff to extract the maximum possible benefit by ‘giving’ them a sense of a ‘win'”.

She turned to the Commission’s Ethics Committee asking for permission to join Uber’s advisory board before the 18 months are up and addressed Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

That permission was denied, but documents show Kroes continued to help the company unofficially until her appointment was announced shortly after the suspension period ended.

This highlights that Kroes was in “clear violation” of the rules, says Alberto Allemanno, a professor of European law at HEC Paris.

Ms Kroes denies having any “official or unofficial role at Uber” before May 2016, when the waiting period ended. He said that as an EU commissioner he interacts with many technology companies, “always with a view to what I believe would benefit the public interest”.

If the police knocked on the door, Uber had a second line of defense — the “kill switch,” which made it impossible for law enforcement visitors to access the company’s computers.

This would limit police access to sensitive company data, such as driver lists, which the company believed would hurt its growth.