Revenu Quebec agents investigated Uber for weeks, including undercover visits to the company’s Montreal offices and following its Quebec general manager to work one day. They suspected the ride-hailing service was misrepresenting that it owed no provincial sales tax and helping some drivers avoid that tax and the federal GST.
On May 13, 2015, they obtained a search warrant, and the next day they raided the company’s premises. But at 10:40 a.m. at two Uber offices in Montreal, investigators noticed company laptops, smartphones and tablets suddenly restarting at exactly the same time.
Concerned that data on the devices could be manipulated remotely, the agents turned them off. They seized 14 computers, 74 phones and some documents, according to court records obtained by CBC/Radio-Canada.
Uber’s Quebec general manager at the time, Jean-Nicolas Guilmet, told investigators he contacted engineers at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, who encrypted all data remotely.
What happened in Montreal was far from an isolated incident, but a tactic used by Uber to try to thwart authorities in the cities where it was trying to establish its business, according to documents found in Uber’s files, a major new leak of internal records from gig economy company.
The leaked records show how the company, which started as a luxury ride-hailing service in San Francisco in 2010, has tried to navigate legal and political hurdles through a complex choreography of lobbying, cultivating powerful allies, evading authorities and ignoring the rules when they appear. uncomfortable.
While Quebec tax authorities were executing a search warrant at Uber’s offices in Old Montreal on May 14, 2015, computers and electronic devices were remotely encrypted and rebooted by engineers at Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco. (Radio-Canada)
The leaked files contain 124,000 records, including 83,000 emails, iMessages and Whatsapp exchanges between top Uber executives, as well as memos, presentations and invoices. The records, which span from 2013 to 2017, shed light on a period when Uber aggressively expanded and operated illegally, flouting taxi regulations in many cities around the world, including Canada.
The files were expired by The Guardian and shared with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalistsnot-for-profit newsroom and network of journalists whose media partners include CBC/Radio-Canada, Toronto Star, Washington Post, BBC and Le Monde.
In a statement to ICIJ, Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for Uber, acknowledged “mistakes” and “missteps” that culminated five years ago in “one of the most scandalous accounts in the history of corporate America,” but that the company has changed its practices. from 2017
Thwarting the authorities
The leaked files reveal that the “kill switch”, as it was called internally, and encryption software were also deployed in France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania and India as government authorities raided the companies’ offices to enforce tax, transport and other laws.
The “kill switch” would remotely cut off access to the company’s servers located in San Francisco and prevent government authorities from obtaining company files, while local staff would still appear to be cooperating with investigators.
According to a leaked 2015 email from Uber’s legal director in Western Europe, the company was particularly concerned that authorities could gain access to its driver list, making it “much easier for taxmen, regulators and police to terrorize our supplies’ and levied against him. “If we hand over the driver list, our goose might be cooked,” he added.
In one of the first such uses of the kill switch, shown in the leak when France’s competition and consumer protection agency raided the company’s Paris offices in November 2014, Uber’s European legal director at the time sent email titled “Kill access to Paris now” at 3:14 pm local time. Thirteen minutes later, an engineering manager replied, “Done now.”
Leaked internal text messages during a raid by French tax authorities at Uber’s Paris office in 2015. Employees are asked to look surprised when their computers can no longer connect to a server as investigators search for evidence. (Uber Files/The Guardian/ICIJ)
During a July 2015 raid by the French tax agency, Mark McGann, Uber’s top lobbyist in Europe, advised Thibold Simphal, then head of Uber France, that employees were being made fools of when the deadlock switch was activated. according to leaked text messages.
“Try a few laptops, look confused when you can’t get access, say the IT team is here [San Francisco] and fast asleep.”
The French manager replied: “Oh yes, we’ve used this manual so many times so far, the hardest part is to keep acting surprised!”
McGahn told the Guardian he was simply following orders. “In every instance where I have personally participated in ‘disruption’ activities, I have acted under the express orders of my leadership in San Francisco,” he said.
Simphal, who is now Uber’s global head of sustainability, said all his interactions with public authorities were conducted in good faith.
During an April 2015 raid on Uber’s offices in Amsterdam, Uber’s manager for Western Europe emailed a company engineer: “Turn off the switch [Amsterdam] as soon as possible please.”
Uber co-founder and then-CEO, Travis Kalanick, was included in the email chain. Seven minutes later, he wrote: “Please hit the shutdown button ASAP… Access should be turned off in [Amsterdam].”
In a statement sent to ICIJ, a spokesman for Kalanick said the former CEO had never authorized actions or programs that would obstruct justice in any country.
He said Uber, like other businesses operating overseas, uses tools to protect the intellectual property and privacy of its customers and guarantees due process rights in the event of extrajudicial arrest.
Kalanick’s spokesperson also said the protocols do not delete any data and that all decisions to use them have been reviewed and approved by Uber’s legal and regulatory departments.
After the Montreal raid, Uber went to court to challenge the validity of the search warrants obtained by Revenu Québec.
A The judge of the Superior Court of Quebec ruled that the orders are valid. He also said that remotely shutting down and encrypting electronic devices “bears all the hallmarks of an attempt to obstruct justice” and that a judge could reasonably conclude that the company was trying to hide evidence of illegal behavior from tax authorities.
It is unclear what happened next with the investigation. A spokesperson for Revenu Quebec told CBC/Radio-Canada that the agency cannot comment on current or past investigations.
Ultimately, Uber reached an agreement with Revenu Québec under which the company would collect GST and QST on behalf of its drivers and remit the amounts to the tax authorities.
Today, Uber trades as a public company valued at US$42 billion – roughly the same as CIBC.
It says it operates in more than 10,000 cities and more than 70 countries. Its name has become a household name for ride-hailing apps in the many markets it dominates, and it’s branching out into food delivery.
But from a bird’s-eye view, the leaked records underscore that there is nothing inevitable about the company’s meteoric rise since its launch in San Francisco in 2010.
Uber’s deliberate strategy to establish itself would also bring many headaches. In a leaked 2014 presentation, the company characterized these issues as a “pyramid of shit,” made up of layers of direct litigation, administrative proceedings, regulatory investigations and driver lawsuits.
A slide from a leaked 2014 presentation titled Europe: The best defense is offense, at Uber’s European headquarters in Amsterdam. (Uber Files/The Guardian/ICIJ)
Uber sought political allies to help it overcome these obstacles and move forward.
“Back Canal Route Around Montreal”
When the UberX service launched in Montreal in 2014, Mayor Denis Coderre immediately publicly stated this “of course it’s illegal.”
Behind the scenes, Uber’s head of policy development sent an internal email saying, “This was fully expected and known, but we are working with the province and Quebec City as a reverse route around Montreal.”
When Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, called on the Ontario government to intervene after UberX launched in Ottawa in October 2014, the same policy manager wrote: “We have met and continue to meet with relevant cabinet ministers of the province to prevent this problem .… We are meeting with the relevant provincial ministers in the provinces across Canada.”
The following month, the City of Toronto moved to seek an injunction against Uber for allegedly violating taxi and limousine regulations.
That same day, Mayor-elect John Tory issued a press release criticized the city’s decisionsaying, “Uber is a technology whose time has come and is here to stay.”
A leaked internal memo suggests that Uber’s policy team was “working to protect [the] extremely positive response” from Tori.
Tory’s office did not respond to our inquiries.
Mayor-elect John Tory speaks to reporters outside Toronto City Hall in late October 2014. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)
On October 4, 2014, John Baird, the federal minister of foreign affairs in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office, complained on Twitter and Facebook that you waited 75 minutes for a cab in Ottawa. He publicly called on the city government to allow Uber, which began operating illegally in the capital.
A few days later, Uber’s policy team claimed it had “secured Canada’s foreign minister as a public supporter,” according to a leaked internal memo.
Baird’s spokesman, Michael Ceci, said the former minister “has no recollection of being contacted by Uber Canada officials.”
Uber has also tried to influence elected officials and public opinion in Alberta.
In Edmonton, when UberX launched in December 2014,…
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