'Uber Files' show Macron cut 'secret deal' for ridesharing company in France

By Cindi Cook

PARIS (AA) - A huge amount of internal documents has been leaked to the media that reveal large-scale lobbying efforts by ridesharing company Uber in the French market and their attempts to influence top French officials, including President Emmanuel Macron, who was economy minister at the time.

The French daily Le Monde along with UK newspaper The Guardian published the documents Monday after a very lengthy report published Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), an independent news organization that investigates corruption and abuses of power. The report was drafted with the investigative unit of Radio France Internationale.

The highly detailed information based on over 124,000 internal documents from Uber and leaked from an anonymous source shows efforts logged between 2013 and 2017. Dubbed the "Uber Files," it includes correspondence, emails, company presentations and text messages to elected officials, including Macron, who was minister of the economy under then-President Francois Hollande at the time.

The findings discuss Uber coming to a secret “deal” with Macron to avoid tight regulation of the sector and to help Uber consolidate its position in France.

The key document: a spreadsheet from 2014 that includes the names of 233 officials whom Uber aimed to get in touch with -- ministers, advisers, parliamentarians, journalists, heads of consumer associations, and those who ran in society’s highest circles.

The documentation shows lobbying efforts to French legislators and ministers to change regulations, with Uber even offering to fashion “ready-made” amendments to deputies to help them press their case during legislative sessions.

For their part, the Elysee is defending the meetings when the president was economy minister, saying he was “naturally led to discuss with many companies involved in the profound change in services that has occurred over the years mentioned” and that his meeting with Uber was in the normal course of his ministerial duties.

On Monday, an outcry from France’s leftist parties was already heard, including from Alexis Corbiere, deputy of the far-left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise or LFI) party for Seine-Saint-Denis.

“It is very serious, the idea that Mr. Macron has in this secret pact with a company deregulated the regulations in terms of taxis,” he said.

The parliamentary leader of the LFI, Mathilde Panot, described on Twitter Macron’s “pillage of the country,” saying he was a “lobbyist for a US multinational aiming to permanently deregulate labor laws.”

Communist Party deputy Pierre Dharreville even called for a parliamentary inquiry into the matter.

The affair dates back to the autumn of 2015, when taxi drivers started staging violent protests in the southern French city of Marseille where Uber was making inroads into that urban market and, drivers emphasized, taking away their business and even breaking laws. Authorities partially suspended business there in the wake of the protests.

At the time, Uber was facing hostilities from the authorities and extensive legal troubles. Uber’s early days were fraught with well-documented gross misconduct with executives who aimed to achieve world dominance by breaking into markets without submitting to regulations and avoiding tax laws as well. Spying on government officials was even part of the mix.

Former embattled Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick was ousted along with other top brass in 2017 in the wake of numerous high-level lawsuits and government-led investigations. The current CEO of Uber is Iranian-American businessman Dara Khosrowshahi, who was previously CEO of Expedia Group.

France’s National Assembly had also passed a pro-taxi law in 2014 to regulate Uber, with authorities at that time investigating the company for violating tax laws and operating taxis without a permit.

The report’s results are shocking, revealing how top executives even aimed to use the violent protests -- which took place in many world cities aside from Marseille -- to their advantage, spinning taxi drivers as bloodthirsty individuals. One story of a near-fatal stabbing was picked out as particularly newsworthy by Uber executives and one that could play well to the press.

In building its case to move into the French and European markets, Uber courted huge investors with deep connections like French business magnate Bernard Arnault, who put in $5 million (4.96 million euros), and French telecom tycoon Xavier Niel, who invested $10 million (9.91 million euros).

Mark MacGann, Uber’s chief lobbyist in Europe, described the efforts to move into new markets at one point as a “shitstorm.”

In order to break into France, MacGann sought the help of Jim Messina, a former deputy chief of staff under US President Barack Obama, who had become a consultant for Uber, taking them on as a client in 2013. One highlight in the leaked report shows a text message exchange between MacGann and Messina in advance of MacGann’s meeting with then-US Ambassador to France Jane Hartley in 2016.

The two men spar about the lack of “love” between Messina and Hartley and joke about Hartley’s desire to keep precious works of art in the ambassador’s residence in Paris, to which Messina jocularly responds, “Sure. Fuxk it.”

The reports also document the company’s “kill switch” -- an automatic shutting down of computers from company servers, thereby blocking investigators from accessing company files -- should they visit, as authorities did in November 2016 at the Paris office.

Part of Macron’s role in 2014 as new minister of the economy was to oversee the consumer protection agency. In the period between September 2014 and February 2016, the report shows numerous text messages between Macron and Uber CEO Kalanick.

Macron met with Kalanick just after becoming minister, much to the pleasure of Kalanick. Uber lobbyist MacGann reiterated in a company email that Macron had asked regulators not to be “too conservative,” an attempt, MacGann offered up, to his commitment to interpreting taxi law in a more favorable fashion to Uber, a “clear desire on his part to work around …the legislation,” said MacGann.

Another text message between Macron and Kalanick has Kalanick questioning whether then-Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve could be trusted. Macron says that he had met with Cazeneuve the previous day and that he had accepted a “deal.”

Macron is said to have replied that he would amend the law. That evening, Uber’s sister service, UberPOP, was suspended in France.

In reporting to Le Monde, Cazeneuve has said that he never heard of a deal between the French government and Uber.