Thread by @ICIJorg

#UberFiles reveals internal communications between top figures and politicians involved in the company’s aggressive scramble into international markets

🧵Here’s some key excerpts from leaked text messages, emails and more exchanged by Uber insiders. ⤵️ bit.ly/3cVbbsW

1/ Leaked files show that Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick personally ordered staff to hit a “kill switch” to prevent authorities from seizing company documents and downplayed concerns about potential violence against drivers as Uber faced pushback. bit.ly/3nSyR3x

2/ A top lobbyist and source of the #UberFiles leak, Mark MacGann brazenly asked political leaders for favors, cultivated ties to Russian oligarchs, and was involved in discussions to undermine police raids, internal communications show. bit.ly/3nSyR3x

3/ #UberFiles show that as the company faced regulatory hurdles in France, company executives had direct lines to Emmanuel Macron, then serving as the country’s economy minister, and held several undisclosed meetings with the rising politician. bit.ly/3yWVIBn

4/ Powerful Russian banker Herman Gref was one of a slew of oligarchs & billionaires that Uber called “allies” who could be used “to protect the business from attacks by competitors and ‘invisible forces’” in a leaked memo on Uber’s plans to enter Russia. bit.ly/3IsqtRL

5/ Neelie Kroes, a former European commissioner, pressed a Dutch minister and other officials “to force regulator and police to back off” an investigation of Uber’s Amsterdam office during her ‘cooling-off period’ from the commission, #UberFiles show. bit.ly/3nSyR3x

6/ David Plouffe, one of a number of former Obama aides recruited for Uber’s lobbying team, became a key player in the company’s global expansion, holding unpublicized meetings with several U.S. officials and leading Uber’s international regulatory fights. bit.ly/3nSyR3x

7/ An early Uber exec, Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, now head of Uber Eats, wrote to staff about a “very good playbook” on tactics “to fight enforcement” and sought to frustrate authorities in Brussels attempting to catch illegal Uber cars, #UberFiles show. bit.ly/3nSyR3x