MACGANN. Mark MacGann is the man who sent tens of thousands of internal Uber documents to The Guardian newspaper, which sparked the revelations about the American company. Who is he ?
[Mis à jour le 11 juillet 2022 à 21h20] “I’m partly responsible, and that’s what motivates me to do what I do as a whistleblower. It’s obviously not an easy thing.” This is how Mark MacGann explains his speaking out in an interview with Guardiantranscribed by French Radio and The world, Monday, July 11, 2022. This man is none other than the former chief lobbyist of the company Uber. Thus, he is the one who started it all, the one who sent 124,000 documents to the British daily The Guardian, and forwarded to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). If the anonymity of such a source is undeniable in such a case, she herself has decided not to remain in the shadows. Because she is one of the central personalities of the “Uber files”.
In his interview, Mark MacGann denounces the practices of his former employer: “The mantra that people repeated from one office to another was that of the management: do not ask permission, get started, hustle, recruit drivers , get out there, do some marketing and pretty soon people will wake up and see what an awesome thing Uber is.” Moreover, he justifies not having acted from the inside: “The corporate culture did not really make it possible to resist, to question the decisions of the company, its strategy or its practices. I ended up realizing that I had no influence, that I was wasting my time in this business.”
Who is Mark MacGann, behind the “Uber files”?
Mark MacGann is a 52-year-old man, of Irish nationality, who worked for Uber for two years, between 2014 and 2016. He held the position of chief lobbyist in charge of Europe, Africa and the Middle East . “I was hired by Uber to lead a team to develop and implement our strategy to lobby governments so that we can enter the market and grow, despite regulations that in most cases , prevented the establishment of Uber”, he explains in his interview.
This man in the shadows, an essential cog in the deployment of Uber in many countries, rubbed shoulders with the highest placed personalities. “I don’t think I’ve ever had such easy access to senior government officials, heads of government, heads of state in my career. It was intoxicating,” he said. he.
The other side of the coin? He was one of the well-identified members of Uber during the crisis with taxis, especially in France. “I started getting insults on Twitter. Then I got yelled at at airports, train stations… Taxi drivers started following me. They were filming where I lived, knocking on doors, posting pictures of me with my friends, and my friends’ kids,” says Mark MacGann. Placed permanently under the protection of bodyguards, he ended up resigning.