“I regret being part of a group of people which massaged the facts to earn the trust of drivers, of consumers and of political elites. It is my duty to [now] speak up and help governments and parliamentarians right some fundamental wrongs.”
That was the reason Mark MacGann, a former Uber Technologies Inc.
UBER,
executive, gave for leaking more than 124,000 confidential documents that give a detailed, damning look into the inner workings of the ride-hailing giant from 2013 to 2017.
MacGann, a former top lobbyist for Uber in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, came forward Monday as the whistleblower who provided company presentations, security reports and emails from the ride-hailing giant. MacGann, who left the company in 2016, told the Guardian in an interview that he feels guilty about his part in helping Uber flout laws and the company’s treatment of drivers.
“I was the one telling people that they should change the rules because drivers were going to benefit and people were going to get so much economic opportunity,” MacGann told the Guardian.
Based on the leaked files, the Guardian and the Washington Post have so far reported about Uber’s lobbying, political dealings and its ties to and dealings with politicians such as French President Emanuel Macron and then-Vice President Joe Biden; the company’s use of technology to foil government raids; its undermining of drivers’ earnings and safety in South Africa; and its unsuccessful efforts to woo Russia’s rich and powerful. The Guardian said it has shared the documents with other news outlets as well.
MacGann also told the Guardian that his position at Uber subjected him to threats to his life, and that he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
An Uber spokesman told MarketWatch on Monday that MacGann spoke highly of the company when he left it in 2016, and that he recently settled a lawsuit against the company for 550,000 euros.
“We understand that Mark has personal regrets about his years of steadfast loyalty to our previous leadership, but he is in no position to speak credibly about Uber today,” the spokesman said.
Jill Hazelbaker, Uber’s senior vice president of marketing and public affairs, said Sunday that the company has already had a “reckoning” over its practices under Travis Kalanick, the co-founder and former chief executive of Uber. Kalanick was ousted in June 2017 after a series of scandals related to the company’s privacy practices and complaints about a culture of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace.
Uber’s current CEO, former Expedia Group Inc.
EXPE,
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, came on board a couple of months later.
“When we say Uber is a different company today, we mean it literally: 90 percent of current Uber employees joined after Dara became CEO,” Hazelbaker wrote in a company blog post. She also said Khosrowshahi “rewrote the company’s values.”
“We have not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly not in line with our present values,” Hazelbaker wrote. “Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come.”
Tom White, an analyst with D.A. Davidson, said Monday that it’s hard to tell whether the Uber files leak will have a long-term impact.
“It’s possible it makes it tougher for Uber to engage with/reach resolutions with the various regulators and government authorities that it comes into contact with globally,” he said.
Uber shares were trading about 4% lower at midday Monday. They are down almost 49% so far this year, as the S&P 500 index
SPX,
has declined 18.2%.
