The Guardian’s unprecedented leak of more than 124,000 documents – known as the Uber files – reveals the ethically questionable practices that fueled the company’s transformation into one of Silicon Valley’s most famous exports. The leak spans a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick, who tried to bring the taxi service to cities around the world by brute force, even if it meant violating taxi laws and regulations. taxi. Amid the fierce global backlash, the data shows how Uber tried to shore up support by subtly flirting with prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, oligarchs and media barons. French taxi drivers are protesting private hire services like Uber. Photo: Olivier Coret/Rex/Shutterstock The leaked messages suggest that Uber executives were under no illusions about the company’s flouting of the law, with one executive joking that they had become “pirates” and another admitting: “We are illegal.” The cache of files, spanning from 2013 to 2017, includes more than 83,000 emails, iMessages and WhatsApp messages, including often candid and unvarnished communications between Kalanick and his top executive team. Q&A

What are Uber records?

projection The Uber Files is a global investigation based on a trove of 124,000 documents leaked to the Guardian. The data consists of emails, iMessages and WhatsApp exchanges between the top executives of the Silicon Valley giant, as well as memos, presentations, notebooks, briefing documents and invoices. The leaked records cover 40 countries and span from 2013 to 2017, the period when Uber was aggressively expanding around the world. They reveal how the company broke the law, deceived police and regulators, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments around the world. To facilitate a global public interest investigation, the Guardian shared the data with 180 journalists in 29 countries through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The investigation was managed and led by the Guardian with the ICIJ. In a statement, Uber said: “We have not and will not condone past behavior that is clearly inconsistent with our current values. Instead, we’re asking the public to judge us based on what we’ve done in the last five years and what we’ll do in the years to come.” Thanks for your response. In one exchange, Kalanick dismissed other executives’ concerns that sending Uber drivers to a protest in France put them at risk of violence from angry rivals in the taxi industry. “I think it’s worth it,” he replied. “Warranty for violence[s] success.” In a statement, Kalanick’s spokesman said he “never suggested that Uber should exploit violence at the expense of driver safety” and any suggestion that he engaged in such activity would be completely false. The leak also contains texts between Kalanick and Emmanuel Macron, who secretly helped the company in France when he was finance minister, allowing Uber frequent and direct access to him and his staff. Macron, the French president, appears to have gone to unusual lengths to help Uber, even telling the company he had brokered a secret “deal” with rivals in the French cabinet. Privately, Uber executives expressed barely veiled disdain for other elected officials who were less receptive to the company’s business model. After German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was mayor of Hamburg at the time, pushed back against Uber lobbyists and insisted they pay drivers a minimum wage, one executive told colleagues he was “a real comedian.” When then-US Vice President Joe Biden, an Uber supporter at the time, was late for a meeting with the company at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Kalanick texted a colleague: “I’ve had my people let him know. that every minute he’s late is a minute less he’ll have with me.” After meeting Kalanick, Biden appeared to modify his prepared Davos speech to refer to a CEO whose company would give millions of workers “the freedom to work the hours they want, run their lives the way they want.” . The Guardian led a global investigation into the leaked Uber files, sharing the data with media organizations around the world through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). More than 180 journalists in 40 media outlets, including Le Monde, the Washington Post and the BBC, will publish a series of investigative reports on the tech giant in the coming days. In a statement responding to the leak, Uber admitted it had made “mistakes and mistakes” but said it had transformed since 2017 under the leadership of its current chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi. “We do not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly inconsistent with our current values,” it said. “Instead, we’re asking the public to judge us based on what we’ve done in the last five years and what we’ll do in the years to come.” Kalanick’s spokesman said Uber’s expansion initiatives “led over a hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and at all times under the direct supervision and full approval of Uber’s strong legal, policy and compliance teams.”

“Embrace the Chaos”

The leaked documents pull back the curtains on the methods Uber used to lay the foundations for its empire. One of the world’s biggest ride-hailing platforms, Uber is now a $43bn (£36bn) company, making around 19m trips a day. The records cover Uber’s operations in 40 countries during a period in which the company became a global behemoth, bringing the taxi service to many of the cities where it still operates today. An Uber car in Moscow. Photo: Fifg/Alamy From Moscow to Johannesburg, funded by unprecedented venture capital funding, Uber heavily subsidized travel, luring drivers and passengers to the app with incentives and pricing models that would not be sustainable. Uber undermined established taxi and taxi markets and pressured governments to rewrite laws to help pave the way for an app-based, gig economy work model that has since proliferated around the world. In an effort to quell backlash against the company and win changes to taxi and labor laws, Uber planned to spend an extraordinary $90 million in 2016 on lobbying and public relations, according to a filing. Her strategy often involved going over the heads of city mayors and transit authorities and straight into the seat of power. In addition to meeting with 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-Chancellor of the United Kingdom. A note from the meeting described Osborne as a “strong advocate”. In a statement, Osborne said it was the government’s express policy at the time to meet global technology companies and “convince them to invest in Britain and create jobs here”. While the Davos meeting with Osborne was announced, the figures reveal that six UK Tory ministers had undisclosed meetings with Uber. It is unclear whether the meetings should have been declared, exposing confusion over how lobbying rules are applied in the UK. Taxis block Whitehall during a protest against the decision to grant Uber a license to operate in London in 2016. Photo: Andy Rain/EPA The documents indicate that Uber was adept at finding unofficial routes to power, exerting influence through friends or middlemen, or seeking meetings with politicians where aides and officials were not present. He enlisted the support of powerful figures in places like Russia, Italy and Germany, offering them valuable financial stakes in the startup and turning them into “strategic investors.” And in an effort to shape policy debates, it paid distinguished academics hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce research that supported the company’s claims about the benefits of its economic model. Despite a well-funded and fierce lobbying operation, Uber’s efforts have had mixed results. In some places Uber has succeeded in getting governments to rewrite laws, with lasting results. But elsewhere, the company found itself blocked by established taxi industries, outbid by local taxi rivals or at odds with left-wing politicians who simply refused to budge. A protester holds a flare during a demonstration in Paris against Uber. Photo: François Mori/AP When faced with opposition, Uber tried to turn it to its advantage, using it to fuel a narrative that its technology was disrupting antiquated transportation systems and urging governments to reform their laws. As Uber launched across India, Kalanick’s top executive in Asia urged executives to focus on driving growth, even as “the fires start to burn.” “Know that this is a normal part of Uber’s business,” he said. “Embrace the chaos. It means you’re doing something important.” Kalanick appeared to apply that ethos in January 2016, when Uber’s efforts to upend markets in Europe led to angry protests in Belgium, Spain, Italy and France by taxi drivers fearing for their livelihoods. Amid taxi strikes and riots in Paris, Kalanick ordered French officials to fight back by encouraging Uber drivers to stage a counter-protest with mass civil disobedience. Warned that doing so risked putting Uber drivers at risk of attack by “far-right thugs” who had infiltrated the taxi protests and were “spoilt for a fight”, Kalanick appeared to urge his team to proceed independently. “I think it’s worth it,” he said. “Warranty for violence[s] success. And these guys are to be resisted, no? Agreed…