New Delhi: Ride-hailing tech giant Uber allegedly broke laws, lobbied policymakers, sought to cover up violations, and joined hands with media companies to influence governments around the world, including in India, as it aggressively expanded its business, investigations by a global media consortium have found.
The allegations stem from a trove of leaked emails from the top brass at Uber Technologies Inc, accessed by The Guardian and shared with The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which includes organisations such as The Washington Post, the BBC, and The Indian Express.
In response, Uber, a company founded in the US in 2009, has denied the allegations both to The Indian Express and to ICIJ journalists who were part of the investigations, saying that the company was acting in the best interest of all its stakeholders.
Meanwhile, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajiv Chandrasekhar told The Indian Express that innovation and regulatory laws should go hand-in-hand.
“Innovation is important, the government will continue to encourage an innovation ecosystem, but it will put in place laws and rules to ensure that the internet is open, safe, trusted and accountable,” The Indian Express quoted the minister as having said.
The first part of the findings, published in The Indian Express Monday, purported to show how the company’s headquarters in San Francisco went into panic mode when a woman was raped by an Uber cab driver in New Delhi in December 2014.
The second part, published Tuesday, detailed how the company allegedly has pending tax payments that run up to Rs. 827 crore, has received several notices from consumer protection authorities in India and is also the subject of a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court over its labour practices.
Uber’s alleged financial irregularities and skirting of laws weren’t limited just to India: In Europe, it’s claimed that the company partnered with influential politicians, such as the now French president Emmanuel Macron and former European Commission vice-president Neelie Kroes, as well as a section of the press, such as the Berlin-based tabloid Bild.
Uber’s former chief European lobbyist Mark MacGann is the whistleblower who leaked 18.69 GB of emails, text messages and company records, in an attempt to expose “Uber’s chaotic global rollout”.
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‘Damage control’
According to The Indian Express‘s investigation, panic engulfed Uber headquarters in San Francisco after a woman was raped in the national capital by an Uber driver, Shiv Kumar Yadav, in December 2014.
The incident took place on the night of 5 December 2014, when the victim, a finance executive working in Gurgaon, was returning to her home in Inderlok, in central Delhi.
Yadav, who was arrested two days after the incident, was sentenced to life imprisonment — a punishment that the Delhi High Court upheld in September 2018.
Monday’s Indian Express report cited a trail of emails from Uber’s top brass to show how the company allegedly went into damage control mode after the incident, trying to blame “Indian local authorities” for its “flawed” system of background checks while issuing licences to drivers. At the same time, Uber worked on some new in-app features to address SOS situations with customers, the report said.
Simultaneously, Uber introduced two new in-app features — the ‘panic button’ and the ‘vehicle location tracking device’. However, reporters at the Express found that in 48 of 50 rides they took, the ‘panic button’ was either missing or wasn’t functional, Monday’s report said.
It was also around this time that Uber allegedly introduced another, more problematic, damage control mechanism: the ‘Kill Switch’. Purportedly aimed at trying to evade the authorities during raids, the ‘Kill Switch’ is a button that helps push crucial and confidential information about the company behind a firewall, making it inaccessible to investigators, the report claimed.
Alleged financial irregularities
The second part of The Indian Express investigation, published Tuesday, detailed how Uber’s top brass allegedly huddled together when the company was slapped with service tax notices in Mumbai in September 2014.
An email allegedly sent by Axel Martinez, Uber’s vice-president and treasurer, to the company’s top executives, talked about how tax authorities in India could bring in arrest warrants unless Uber “opened their books”.
“Authorities want Uber to open their books, otherwise, we are facilitating fraud. They have summoned RG (Ryan Graves, then senior vice president, global operations at Uber) & TK (then CEO Travis Kalanick). Penalties and warrants for arrest are next,” said a PowerPoint presentation attached to the email dated 25 November 2014, according to The Indian Express.
The report also said that the Central Consumer Protection Authority had issued Uber a notice in May this year for alleged violations of consumer rights. In addition, the intelligence wing of India’s Goods and Services Tax department had demanded that the company pay a total of Rs 827 crore of outstanding service tax pending since 2017. Uber, however, challenged this in the Bombay High Court, the report said.
In addition, a PIL in the Supreme Court wants all workers with service aggregator companies such as Uber to be treated “as workers under applicable social security laws and extension of benefits and all gig workers as unorganised workers or/ and wage workers”, the report said.
The Income Tax commissioner (appeals) in Mumbai had also ruled that Uber was an “assessee in default” under the Income Tax Act, 1961, and was therefore liable to pay TDS (tax deducted at source) of Rs. 24.92 crore for 2016-17 and 2017-18, The Indian Express said in its report. However, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal in Mumbai reversed this ruling on 4 March 2021, the report said.
Additionally, the Reserve Bank of India had allegedly warned Uber against evading additional authentication after introducing new payment models. This situation was especially precarious as it violated the Foreign Exchange Management Act and the Payment and Settlements Systems Act, 2007, claimed the report.
Media partnerships
On 31 December 2014 — three weeks after the rape case in Delhi led to the company being banned in the national capital — Uber allegedly partnered with The Times of India. According to the Indian Express report, the editor of The Economic Times, a newspaper owned by the Times Group, wrote an email to Kalanick asking him to travel to Delhi on 16 and 17 January for ET’s Global Business Summit.
“Your insights will help set the agenda for policy formulation in India and other countries,” the email allegedly reads. “It will also enable you to acquaint yourself with decision-makers in India.”
Immediately after this email, the report said, Kalanick had allegedly written to his associates at Uber saying it was essential to keep a good relationship with TOI, and that they should offer “any help” that the media organisation needed.
The Times Group rejected the allegations as “motivated and coloured”, saying that the claims presume “that alleged Times Internet Limited investment in Uber had bearing on articles published in Times Group publications”.
“We vehemently oppose your attempt to malign us, as an independent media house which is unaffiliated to any political party/ agenda and has been a pillar of integrity in our rich and diverse society for close to two centuries,” the Times Group told The Indian Express in response to the allegations.
“Without going into specific allegations about Times Internet limited and without prejudice to our rights and contentions, we state that TIL is an independent company with its separate management,” it added.
“All investments made by the companies in the group, would be in their course of business and in compliance with laws of India as well as the code of conduct applicable to all Times Group companies,” the response further said, according to the Indian Express report.
“Specifically regarding BCCL (Bennett Coleman & Company Limited, the group that owns The Times of India), we can confirm that over the years we have had a cordial advertising with Uber in India. We, however, categorically deny any involvement in Uber’s internal affairs or policies, such as the ones mentioned in your mail. We further categorically deny facilitating or providing Uber with any form of political access, or promoting changes in legislation/ regulation.”
Global operations
According to the Indian Express investigation, Ryan Graves, Uber’s senior vice-president of global operations, allegedly wrote an email to his colleagues saying that the company should partner with the German tabloid Bild to help overcome political hurdles.
“They have a problem, and we have a solution,” Graves allegedly wrote to his colleagues.
Uber had also enlisted the help of Emmanuel Macron — then a minister in the French government under François Hollande — in its lobbying efforts break into France’s taxi industry, the report claimed. This has led to calls for a parliamentary inquiry in France.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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