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| Mark MacGann |
Mark MacGann, who was Uber’s chief European lobbyist from 2014 to 2016, outed himself as the whistleblower who leaked 124K documents to the Guardian that documented the ridesharing company’s aggressive tactics in Europe.
The British paper shared the so-called “Uber Files” with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and top newspapers such as the Washington Post.
In a video interview with the Guardian released July 11, MacGann took responsibility for “telling people that they should change the rules because drivers were going to benefit and people were going to get so much economic opportunity.”
He said Uber “actually sold people a lie,” and Uber was willing “to break all the rules and use its money and its power, to impact, to destroy.”
Jill Hazelbaker, Uber’s senior VP for public affairs, admitted the company made plenty of mistakes prior to 2017.
“These mistakes culminated in one of the most infamous reckonings in the history of corporate America,” she said in a statement, leading to an “enormous amount of public scrutiny, a number of high-profile lawsuits, multiple government investigations and the terminations of several senior executives.”
That reckoning is why Uber “hired a new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, who was tasked with transforming every aspect of how Uber operates,” said Hazelbaker.
Uber will not make excuses for past behavior, but asks the public to judge it by what it has done over the past five years and what it will do in the future.
Prior to Uber, MacGann was senior VP & head of government relations & advocacy at the New York Stock Exchange, head of public affairs for the EMEA region at Weber Shandwick, associate partner at Brunswick Group and consultant at Havas.
He launched Moonshot Ventures in Ireland in 2016.
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