An explosive report in the Guardian brought to light documents revealing alarming insights about Uber's global expansion, including breaking laws, duping law enforcement, secret lobbying, and the exploitation of drivers. Hatem Dhiab, managing Partner at Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, joined Cheddar News to discuss the latest on the details. "Ultimately, you know, this is gonna bring some more lawsuits and some more negative news, which is ultimately going to impact the stock going forward," he said.

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Uber Is in the Hot Seat After Shocking Document Leak

Mexico's the bell and share our news. Everyone Uber in hot water on the heels of an explosive report from the Guardian According to a trove of more than 124,000 documents leaked to the outlet. The ridesharing company knowingly broke laws. Do police secretly lobby governments, received aid from top politicians and exploited violence against drivers to boost business. So joining me now is hot time. Diab managing partner at Gerber Kawasaki Hot time. Good to see you this afternoon. Some pretty alarming revelations here. The stock falling in the wake of this of course, no longer run by Travis Kalanick about. What's your reaction to this report? Good to see you Kristen. Thanks for having me back. I mean, it's a bombshell report for sure. I mean, we knew Uber was doing some, uh, some really interesting things when under Travis, they were really pushing the limits and pushing the boundaries beyond really what we, what we can expect from, from a business person. But this is really with the involvement of all the politicians and, and, and really more kind of negative negative news about, you know, getting drivers involved and put them in danger. It's really too much. I mean, I think it's, it's really, uh, something that we can allow. So here's the question. I'm sure you probably do not own shares of twitter hot time at Gerber Kawasaki, I'd be curious if you're short shares of Uber is that the case we don't short, uh, stocks. Usually we never liked the business. The business was never profitable. I think. Uh, Uber is symptomatic of a, of a Silicon Valley, um, uh, culture where they were just pushing a lot of money to kind of own the market without really having a product that's profitable. And until this day, I think 10 years after its founding, Uber still hasn't really figured out how to make real money. And as a result, I don't think it's a business that you want to own at this point. So another question is the stock is down close to 5% today. But again, Kalanick has been out of this company, pushed out of this company years ago and we all know why because of aggressive behavior. I mean, this might not surprise some people that this was happening under Kalanick's watch based on all of the stories that we covered in the Uber files years ago. But why is it having a reaction today? Since he's been gone for years? I'm not sure this is just directly to the report. I think the whole market is down, especially the growth uh, side. But I think this is gonna bring more lawsuits. Uh, it's unfortunate for data who's a new Ceo to have to still deal with this because he's really been trying to clean up Kalanick's mess for a long time, but ultimately, you know, this is gonna bring some more lawsuits and some more negative news, which is ultimately going to impact the stock going forward. What do you think this means for politicians? Any potential fallout. There was former Vice President joe biden, now President, former Finance minister, then french President Emmanuel Macron who were engaged in some of these lobbying efforts. I spoke to some contacts in France this morning and Emmanuel Macron is really in trouble or at least, I mean, he's he's lost his parliamentary majority last two weeks ago. So he's already been embattled and this has really bring some negative news. There's already some, some lawsuits being filed against him, some some investigation, but it's just super embarrassing for this to happen. You know, uh he, you know, he he went against his government and helped lobby for, for a company that was really breaking the law and just really don't want to be doing this. Uh, this happens in America a lot. We see a lot of these conversations happen between politicians and business, but it doesn't really happen as much in europe. So it's super embarrassing for him. Interesting what other companies have you seen this happen to in the US? I mean, we can see what happens. We were, we can see what happened with Theranos, you know, you know, a lot, a lot of these companies or at least the these the Ceo is that, you know, in Silicon Valley, they think they are, you know, basically have Godlike powers, you know, and and and can do whatever they want. I think the mentality of move fast and break things. I can think of facebook to with Zuckerberg is really something that's hurting our society and I think we need to to ramp to bring that down and politicians have to start regulating them. I also want to note this other factor here. I mean the company apparently used this so called kill switch on its computers to prevent authorities from investigating its business practices. I mean what time have you seen any sort of information that practices like these are still happening now under new leadership with Darcos Rajshahi leading the helmet. Uber. I don't think any legit ceo will ever do something like this. Uh there's a show super pumped. I think that really documented this after a book by I think Isaac about this whole this whole tactics that Uber did and you know these skills which is and so forth. I think they knew they were doing something wrong right. They were trying to cover their tracks and trying to basically wipe their data because they knew if they get caught this would be problematic and the the emails and text messages gonna show that and it's very unfortunate that actually nobody has been criminally charged from this. Uh Travis Kalanick ended up with about $3 billion when he saw all of his shares. So basically slap on the wrist and $3 billion