The deal was part of a concerted effort by the Silicon Valley company to court several billionaires as well as top government officials reportedly aligned with Vladimir Putin in a bid to secure its foothold in the Russian market. Uber’s previously unknown lobbying campaign in Russia is revealed in Uber files, a leak of more than 124,000 documents to the Guardian. They reveal how in 2015-16 Uber tried to secure influence at the highest levels of the Russian state by reaching out to oligarchs said to have close ties to the Kremlin and encouraging them to invest in the company. 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. But it is the deal with Vladimir Senin – a powerful lobbyist at the time and now a pro-Kremlin member of the State Duma – that could prove most damaging to Uber. Former US prosecutors and corruption experts said the circumstances under which Uber hired Senin in 2016 should have raised “red flags” and risked violating US anti-bribery laws. Uber admitted it had hired Senin and paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars, but said it did not believe there had been any violation of the law. Referring to his ties to Putin, a company spokesman said: “We will certainly not be dealing with Mr Senin or others like him today.” Uber’s relationship with Senin was a pillar of an aggressive push into Russia as the company entered a potentially huge market before facing threats from state agencies, prosecutors and competitors. Vladimir Senin at a banking forum in Sochi in 2017. Photo: Artur Lebedev/imago/Itar-Tass With few friends in Moscow and no Russian investors, Uber first turned to Roman Abramovich before securing deals with companies controlled by billionaires Alisher Usmanov, Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, as well as Herman Gref, the head of the major Russian bank controlled by the State. Sberbank. Each of the powerful figures Uber secured as a partner in Russia — a market it has since pulled out of — has since come under Western sanctions in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine this year, accused of benefiting from strong ties to the president and domestic his circle. Usmanov, Fridman and Aven are challenging the EU sanctions against them. Fridman and Aven have described the basis of the sanctions as “bogus” and spoken out against the invasion. Usmanov said it was “wrong” to portray him as connected to Putin. However, the filings show that between 2015 and 2016 Uber’s goal was to recruit business tycoons as “strategic allies,” offering their companies coveted shares in the Silicon Valley company ahead of a widely expected IPO. In return, Uber wanted political support. The strategy replicates Uber’s approach to lobbying in other parts of the world, which has often gone over the heads of regulators and officials to curry favor with prime ministers, presidents and powers. Responding to the Guardian’s findings, a spokesperson for Uber said its current leadership “rejects any past relationships with anyone associated with the Putin regime.” Ultimately, Uber’s brash and transactional lobbying strategy appears to have misjudged the political reality of an increasingly authoritarian Russia hostile to a brash American startup. Uber taxi in Moscow. Photo: Alexander Sayganov/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock Uber effectively pulled out of Moscow in 2017 and earlier this year announced it would “accelerate” the sale of its remaining stake in a joint venture with Yandex, a partnership that had kept its brand alive in the country. But Uber’s filings raise pressing questions about the company’s current leadership on Russia, its stance on corruption and the company’s decision to dive headfirst into some of the murkiest political waters it has encountered in its global expansion. .

The “power rating”

Uber’s first major PR crisis in Russia began in September 2014. After a nationalist Duma member publicly denounced it, Moscow city officials supported calls to the Kremlin to ban the taxi app. Fearing a backlash, executives ordered security guards into her office. Uber’s man on the ground in Moscow warned colleagues that Putin’s party in the State Duma could use the opportunity to “take revenge” on the company. Days later, senior executives at Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco began discussing potential Russian investors. In an email to the company’s chief lobbyists, Emil Michael, Uber’s chief operating officer, presented industrial tycoon Abramovich as an option. “I think we want someone aligned with Putin,” he wrote, acknowledging that he knew little about Russian politics. Roman Abramovich. Photo: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images The documents show that in the months that followed, a strategy emerged: find an oligarch or someone with sufficient influence who could invest in Uber, incentivizing them to serve as a political ally in Moscow. Uber initially approached Abramovich’s top lieutenant, and in February 2015 an internal email said the oligarch was “actively looking” at a deal. When talks broke down, an Uber executive said Abramovich had “decided not to invest because of the high valuation, but offered to help.” Abramovich, who has denied allegations of his closeness to Putin, did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the Guardian. Undeterred, Uber commissioned political consultants in Moscow to compile a list of oligarchs and assess their potential as “strategic partners” based on their influence among Russian elites and their ties to the state. The study produced a leading candidate: Usmanov, the Uzbek-born metals and technology magnate. According to the advisers, Usmanov enjoyed “the trust of top state officials” and had long-standing relationships with close associates of Putin. A similar list gave the tycoons a “power score” and awarded Usmanov the highest rating. Uber reached out to one of its top executives and got an immediate response. As things move quickly, Michael adopted a note of caution: “We have to be clear with the Russian investors, but at the same time not offend them, so let’s be careful what we say.” Uber secured a $20 million investment from the billionaire’s USM holding company months later. A spokesman for Usmanov said the deal was brokered by an investment bank and was a “purely financial investment” that “has nothing to do with politics or the Russian government.” He said USM made no “promises or commitments” to Uber about government relations and any suggestion that Usmanov was connected to Putin was “false”. However, for Uber, politics seems to have been at the forefront of its approach to all the oligarchs in its crosshairs. After USM’s initial investment, Travis Kalanick, then Uber’s CEO, met with two of Usmanov’s top executives in Davos in January 2016 in an effort to raise more money. A briefing prepared for the meeting outlined Uber’s message: invest and “give us government relations support.” Alisher Usmanov in his Moscow office in 2017. Photo: Bloomberg/Getty Images The Russians were receptive, an inside memo suggests. “USM took the step of what they could do to move the needle on the policy front.”

Negotiation in Davos

But Usmanov was not the only Russian backer of Uber, and in the Swiss Alpine resort the company struck a deal with another powerful oligarch. On the sidelines of the 2016 World Economic Forum, Kalanick squeezed into a crucial meeting at the palatial five-star Belvedere Hotel with an emissary from LetterOne (L1), a private equity vehicle controlled by Fridman. With fellow oligarch Aven, Fridman ran the Alfa Group, a sprawling Russian conglomerate. The couple had amassed vast fortunes in the economic chaos after the fall of the Soviet Union. Fortunately, they were now deeply embedded in the Western financial system. Weeks after the Davos meeting, a press release announced L1’s $200 million investment, with Fridman personally championing the partnership. But executives appeared eager to ensure a key aspect of the deal remained secret. Along with the $200 million investment, Uber granted L1 a warrant package that gave the company the option to later purchase an additional $50 million in Uber shares at a bargain price. The warrants would vest if Uber’s trips to Russia continued to grow. Documents suggest that Uber designed the warrants to “induce” and “induce” L1 to help the US company resolve its political and regulatory issues in Russia, which L1 had offered to help with. Uber’s senior lobbyist Mark MacGann…