Mark MacGann
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Mark MacGann is the Uber lobbyist turned whistleblower whose disclosure John Kiriakou presented in a 2023 edition of his programme The Whistleblowers.

The job

MacGann, a 52-year-old Irishman, "served as Uber's chief lobbyist for Europe, the Middle East and Africa from 2014 to 2016, and oversaw government relations and public policy in more than 40 countries." His brief was persuasion: "courting governments in more than 40 countries to convince them that Uber was the next big thing."

The pitch worked in both directions. Investment opportunities abounded, executives "threw themselves at the company hoping to work for what they thought was the next Google or Apple," and to the public Uber presented itself as a life-changing opportunity, "especially for low-income people with access to a car" who could work for themselves as many hours a day as they wanted.

The pushback

It did not go smoothly. Protests erupted among taxi drivers in Berlin, London, Paris and Athens; German courts restricted some of the company's services; and in Greece it was banned altogether. MacGann was put in charge of the team formed to confront that, and argued publicly that Uber was not anti-regulation but a technology company "using data to match supply with demand."

Kiriakou's summary of the gap between that and the operating instruction is MacGann's own: "the mantra that people repeated from one office to the other was the mantra that came from the top, don't ask for permission, just hustle and list drivers, go out, do the marketing, and quickly people will wake up and see what a great thing Uber is."

The charge

What makes it a whistleblower case in Kiriakou's framing is not the law-breaking but the knowledge. Gig work in many countries offered "no benefits, long hours, low pay and grinding work conditions," and the company was "not the great job opportunity it marketed itself to be, the opportunity that would lift people out of poverty." "And to make matters worse, the company's leadership knew that from the beginning."

The disclosure

MacGann provided 124,000 pages of internal Uber documents to the Guardian, which in turn shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and with major newspapers. The material covers 2013 to 2017 and, in Kiriakou's description, "laid bare the company's tactics to establish footholds and to win market share, even if that meant violating the law", including flouting laws across Europe, duping police, exploiting violence against drivers, and secretly lobbying governments.

See also

- Whistleblower Protection Act
- Corporate whistleblower protections
- John Kiriakou
