Uber France Leaders Arrested For Running Illegal Taxi Company

An anonymous reader writes: Two Uber executives were arrested by French authorities for running an illegal taxi company and concealing illegal documents. This is not the first time Uber has run into trouble in France. Recently, taxi drivers started a nation-wide protest, blocking access to Roissy airport and the nation's interior minister issued a ban on UberPop. A statement from an Uber spokesperson to TechCrunch reads: "Our CEO for France and General Manager for Western Europe were invited to a police hearing this afternoon; following this interview, they were taken into custody. We are always available to answer all the questions on our service, and available to the authorities to solve any problem that could come up. Talks are in progress. In the meantime, we keep working in order to make sure that both our customers and drivers are safe following last week’s turmoils."

Comments

Does Uber need executives in France?

[EllisDees]

It's not like they need to have a physical presence for their app to work there.

Re:Taxi licenses are crazy expensive

[pecosdave]

It's their own fucking faults. They lobby to make sure this is the system that's in place to prevent competition from companies like Uber. They got the laws they paid for, it's the people who bought the first wave of licenses/medallions whatever that made bank, now everyone else has to deal with it.

An upstart breaking that system is exactly what real business needs.

Uber has demonstrated contempt for the law

[rahvin112]

Regardless of whether the laws as written are correct (I would argue that the very existence of a "medallion" that costs more than the filing fee is evidence of collusion between the taxi authority and the taxi's) Uber has shown direct contempt for the rule of law. Their CEO's frequently ignore court orders, not only that but they frequently do the exact opposite of what a court has ordered. In Korea the authorities were forced to start fining drivers record amounts, in Germany the authorities had to threaten to seize cars and fines in excess of $25K. None of this should be necessary as Uber should have shut down their platform in the area when the courts ruled against the legality of their service. If they didn't like the ruling they should have complied while challenging the ruling.

I've said all along the only way to get Uber to comply with the law is stop arresting drivers and start arresting executives for facilitating breaking the law. I'm happy to see the French are finally going to follow through at least partly, I doubt targeting these executives will do the trick the Uber corporate executives will simply let them burn, though the seizure of communications may give them the evidence they need to really get the law breaking to stop, that is to issue InterPOL red notices (warrants) for the CEO and heads of Uber corporate. I firmly believe that Uber acts in total disregard of the law because of their CEO and that the only way to get it to stop is directly go after that CEO. Once he's looking at a jail term I suspect Uber will suddenly become a law abiding business.

IMO Uber acts as a corrupt organization with contempt of the law and should be targeted under RICO statutes.

Re:Taxi licenses are crazy expensive

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

According to TPP pushed by Obama and supported by GOP, if foreign company invested in these medallions and they lose value because of some change in the law/regulation they can sue the federal government for compensation. This bail out is not available for domestic investors. Only foreign investors can do this. And only the foreign investor has the standing to sue, not unions, not labor activists, not local governments. And they will be judged by fellow lawyers who could be representing other parties at the same time.

I know you're trolling

[rsilvergun]

Or at least I hope you are, and you're not just a paid shill/astroturfer (you're a bit too crude for that), but you've also never had a mini-gun pointed at him by private "security" personal because you asked for better pay. You've never had terrorists come in the night and cut your families throats for the same thing (google "Coca-Cola South America" sometime). You have no bloody idea what the hell your talking about. If you did you probably wouldn't be trolling it and you'd go back to goatse and Natalie Portman Hot Grits.