MacGann, the public face of the company’s tumultuous European expansion, said he leaked the trove of documents to make up for his role in its predatory practices: “We had actually sold people a lie.”
Updated July 11, 2022 at 2:11 pm EDT|Posted July 11, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. EDT Comment on this story Comment Mark MacGann, the former top Uber executive who served as the company’s public face in Europe during a tumultuous period of expansion, was revealed on Monday as the whistleblower behind the blockbuster revelations about the company’s inner workings. A longtime European lobbyist, MacGann interacted with top global business and government leaders during his tenure at the company between 2014 and 2016, but also came face-to-face with violent protests over Uber’s disruptive practices. He said he left the company after concluding that Uber’s culture left him powerless to challenge or change its ways and fearing that the backlash against the company was putting his family’s safety at risk. MacGann leaked more than 124,000 corporate documents to the Guardian, which shared the material with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which helped lead the project, and dozens of other news organizations, including the Washington Post. Uber’s records, which date between 2013 and 2017, reveal the company’s aggressive entry into cities around the world — while often questioning the reach of existing laws and regulations. Read evidence from the Uber records investigation MacGann, 52, appeared in a video interview with the Guardian published on Monday. As the chief lobbyist responsible for pushing Uber’s European expansion, MacGann said he bears some responsibility for the company’s actions he now condemns — including how it lured governments and the public with rosy visions of upward mobility and financial freedom for low-income drivers. Pulling back the curtain on the company’s operations during those years — even revealing communications showing his role in some of Uber’s most controversial practices — is his attempt to make amends, he said. “I was the one talking to governments, I was the one pushing this with the media, I was the one telling people that they need to change the rules because the drivers would benefit and people would have so many financial opportunities,” he said. “When it turned out that wasn’t the case – we had actually sold people a lie – how can you have a clear conscience if you don’t stand up and have a say in how people are treated today?” But MacGann ultimately faulted the company for what he said was a willingness “to break all the rules and use its money and its power to influence, to destroy.” Uber spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said “mistakes” made earlier in Uber’s history led five years ago to “one of the most infamous calculations in the history of corporate America,” which included lawsuits, investigations and several departures from the ranks of the executive leadership. “We do not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly inconsistent with our current values,” he 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.” Regarding MacGann, however, Uber spokesman Noah Edwardsen said in a statement Monday that he is “not in a position to speak reliably for Uber today.” He said “Mark had nothing but praise for Uber when he left the company six years ago,” citing a departure email in which he called himself a “strong believer in Uber’s mission.” MacGann and Uber recently settled a legal dispute that the Guardian reported was related to compensation. An Uber spokesman said Monday that MacGann was paid 550,000 euros (about $554,000). “It’s remarkable that Mark only felt compelled to blow the whistle after his check had cleared,” Edwardsen said. MacGann previously acknowledged that “certainly, I’ve had my grievances with Uber in the past.” On Monday, after Uber released its statement, it said its talks with the Guardian began in December, five months before Uber moved to settle its lawsuit, and that “my lawyers are still fighting for me to get the full payment”. He said he placed no restrictions on when reporters could use the leaked documents. MacGann added: “The data I have released speaks for itself.” MacGann is the latest whistleblower to go public with the decision to leak confidential documents that shed light on how some of the world’s most powerful and consistent players operate, including tech giants and government agencies. In 2013, former government contractor Edward Snowden was revealed as the confidential source who provided documents to the Guardian and The Post that exposed the National Security Agency’s massive global surveillance programs. In 2018, Cambridge Analytica’s former director of research, Christopher Wylie, shared material with reporters showing how the data firm improperly collected data from millions of Facebook users to target voters on behalf of Donald Trump’s campaign. And in 2021, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen shared confidential company documents with the Wall Street Journal and later the US Securities and Exchange Commission that showed the company had failed to prevent the spread of false and inflammatory content. The Facebook documents, like the Uber files, were reviewed by a consortium of news organizations, including The Post. Whistleblowing can lead to major investigations, prosecutions and new laws. Although their motivations can be complex, corporate or government hackers often express the belief that publicly disclosing confidential activities is the only way to ensure the change they hope to see. MacGann is an Irishman who speaks fluent French and spent more than two decades lobbying technology, telecommunications and financial services across Europe before joining Uber. He started working at the company as a consultant in the summer of 2014. Months later, he was inducted into the staff as a high-ranking chief lobbyist: courting governments in more than 40 countries across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It was a role that placed him in the grid of power at a whirlwind time for the company. A business world still reeling from the rise of tech companies like Google and Facebook saw Uber as the next big thing. Investors raced to get in on the ground floor and top talent signed on for executive roles in hopes of stock options that could turn into mini-fortunes. Uber was “the hottest ticket in town and to some extent, both from the investor side and from the political side, people were almost falling over themselves to meet with Uber and hear what we had to offer,” he said. . MacGann, who suddenly found he had personal access to world leaders and their advisers. It was an “intoxicating” experience, he said. But the company faced resistance in many countries, mainly from taxi drivers who couldn’t compete with the low fares offered by Uber, whose drivers in new cities were heavily subsidized initially with millions of dollars in investment capital. Demonstrations broke out in Berlin, London and Paris. Local courts in Germany had restricted some of Uber’s services. MacGann was put in charge of a team tasked with lobbying governments to allow Uber to make inroads, sometimes in the face of legal or regulatory hurdles. In media interviews and speeches throughout his tenure, MacGann stated that Uber was not “anti-regulatory” but simply a “technology company” that uses data to match supply with demand — and for This, he argued, should not be adhered to under the old regulatory models for the taxi industry. Now, MacGann summarizes Uber’s strategy as one of simply entering new markets and expanding as best it can, despite the awareness that it may well be breaking local laws. “The mantra that people were repeating from one office to another was the mantra from the top,” MacGann said. “Don’t ask for permission. Just launch, push, recruit drivers, get out there, do the marketing and quickly people will wake up and see what a great thing Uber is.” Devon Spurgeon, a spokeswoman for Uber founder and then-CEO Travis Kalanick, said in a statement that “Uber’s expansion operations led over one hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and at all times under the direct supervision and with the full endorsement of Uber’s strong legal policy and compliance teams.” Kalanick helped pioneer a business model that “required a change in the status quo as Uber became a serious competitor in an industry where competition has historically been outlawed,” he added. In a statement sent to The Post after MacGann was revealed Monday, Spurgeon said “we have no comment at this point.” The Uber files also implicate MacGann, however, along with his former colleagues, in some of Uber’s harshest business practices. He is shown personally reaching out to Emmanuel Macron, then France’s economy minister, after a local official in the city of Marseille banned an Uber service in 2015, and is engaged in an aggressive lobbying and influence campaign to establish a foothold in Russia. And MacGann played a part in talks surrounding anti-Uber protests that have erupted in some European cities — sometimes involving physical attacks on Uber drivers — according to internal communications leaked by the lobby. Uber used violent attacks against its drivers to pressure politicians In a text message exchange from January 2016, Kalanick urged his top lieutenants to stage a counter-protest in Paris, and appeared to play down concerns about “taxi violence” against Uber drivers. “I think it is…
