Verslag van een hoorzitting / rondetafelgesprek : Verslag van een gesprek, gehouden op 21 maart 2023, met Mark MacGann, klokkenluider Uber Files

Nr. 1212
VERSLAG VAN EEN GESPREK

Vastgesteld 11 april 2023

De vaste commissie voor Financiën heeft op 21 maart 2023 overleg gevoerd over Uber Files.

Van dit overleg brengt de commissie bijgaand geredigeerd woordelijk verslag uit.

De voorzitter van de commissie, Tielen

De waarnemend griffier van de commissie, Schukkink

Voorzitter: Omtzigt

Griffier: Lips

Aanwezig zijn vier leden der Kamer, te weten: Alkaya, Dassen, Nijboer en Omtzigt,

alsmede de heer MacGann.

Aanvang 17.09 uur.

De voorzitter:

Ik open deze hoorzitting over Uber met de heer MacGann. Hoewel Engels een van de vier
officiële voertalen is van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, is het volstrekt ongewoon
om een vergadering in het Engels te houden. Toch kiezen we daarvoor, vanwege onze
gast. Ik hoop dat u daar begrip voor heeft. We zullen proberen om achteraf een korte
vertaling online te zetten, maar we hebben geen simultaanvertaling voor de mensen
die meekijken.

Good afternoon, and welcome to this meeting between members of the standing committee
on Finance of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands and Mr Mark MacGann,
former employee of Uber. I wish you a warm welcome, Mr MacGann. You travelled to us
to answer questions and to clarify your view on the fiscal treatment of Uber in the
Netherlands. The reason why we invited you are the Uber Files and a number of newspaper
articles.

Also a warm welcome to Ms Gibson, the legal adviser of Mr MacGann. We fully appreciate
that you need legal advice when you blow the whistle.

A warm welcome to the members of the public in this room and to those who follow this
meeting in the room next door. There was so much interest in this meeting that we
had to seat people in a second room. Welcome also to those who follow the meeting
online.

We have one and a half hours and relatively few Members of Parliament present. That
means that we have ample time. I propose that you, Mr MacGann, start by giving us
an introduction. If you need fifteen minutes, you will have them. Then there is room
for asking questions for clarification.

I invite the members to briefly introduce themselves.

De heer Nijboer (PvdA):

My name is Henk Nijboer, spokesperson on finance for the Labour Party.

De heer Alkaya (SP):

I am Mahim Alkaya, MP for the Socialist Party and spokesperson on finance among other
things.

De heer Dassen (Volt):

Laurens Dassen, MP for the European party Volt.

De voorzitter:

Mr MacGann, the floor is yours. When you speak, please use the microphone, so that
people can hear you. Besides, the camera will then zoom in on you.

De heer MacGann:

Thank you, Mr chairman, for the invitation to the finance committee. I am here today
at your invitation to answer any questions you have, following the publication of
the so-called Uber Files last July. As you know, I was previously a senior executive
at Uber, in charge of public policy. My main role was to convince governments and
regulators in nearly 50 countries around Europe, Africa and the Middle East to change
the law to allow Uber to operate and be successful. So, I am the source of these files,
which came to light through an investigation that was jointly led by the Guardian
newspaper and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Over 108
journalists from 44 media organizations in 29 countries researched through more than
124,000 documents, to reveal how Uber bullied its way into cities around the world,
including here in the Netherlands.

The files span a period from 2013 to 2017 and they unveil Uber's aggressive expansion
across the world. They show that just in this region alone we lobbied more than 1,800
politicians and officials in 29 countries, as well as many senior representatives
of the European Union. The data shows that the company had easy access to prominent
leaders. The company influenced governments and the company avoided taxes.

So, why do I release this information? Why do I sacrifice my reputation, my career,
my health and countless friendships by providing the data to the media and by assisting
them with their work? Because, members of the finance committee, ladies and gentlemen,
this is not just about Uber. It is about the systemic failures that helped a company
like Uber to take advantage of loopholes to get what they wanted, to the detriment
of drivers, taxpayers and even democracy itself. The reason why I am here today is
to try and help to prevent this from happening again. I have been at the nexus of
the worlds of business and government for almost 30 years. I was trusted by companies
and their shareholders to convince legislators, regulators and governments to propose,
enact and revise laws and regulations in the interests of private enterprise. I am
proud of that career and of much of the work I accomplished.

But in the minds of some there is something opaque and underhanded about lobbying.
Being a lobbyist is not always perceived as a noble thing to be. According the dictionary,
a lobbyist is a person seeking to influence legislators on a particular issue. That
is essentially what I did. I continue to believe that skilled, ethical, regulated
lobbying is a fundamental component of an effective democracy. It ensures that politicians
like yourselves are well-informed and can make decisions that benefit us all, companies
and people alike. For this to happen though, there have to be robust rules governing
the interaction between the private enterprise and the representatives of the state,
both politicians and civil servants. Those rules must be sensible, fair, non-discriminatory
and as beneficial to the public good as possible.

What the revelations of the Uber Files show, is that the rules governing this interaction
have broken down. They were not fit for purpose when Uber knowingly was breaking laws
around the world and they remain unfit for purpose today. Uber bullied its way into
countries and disregarded the law because it faced little or no real resistance. I
am alarmed by the continued inability of the state, here and in many democratic nations
around the world, to resist and refute unethical, immoral private sector interests,
motivated not by the public good, but by profit and pure greed.

So if you accept that lobbying per se is not the problem, then what are the practices
that bring lobbyists into disrepute and allow companies to drive a coach and four
horses through the law, as Uber did in those days? Uber's methods duped politicians
and the public alike, with politicians often sabre-rattling in the media but showing
far greater interest in cooperation in our private meetings. It was no exception here
in the Netherlands, where the highest levels of government, having eagerly provided
Uber with an immoral, unethical tax status, provided encouragement in our private
meetings while instructing the Public Prosecution Service and other enforcement authorities
to raid our offices, scare honest Uber drivers and charge executives with criminal
acts. It was very odd to witness the schizophrenic attitude of many governments. Telling
us directly and via the media that we were breaking the law, while at the same time
trying to find quick fixes to let us into the market and hopefully generate tax revenues
and create jobs and wealth.

I say this respectfully, but I suppose there was a certain logic here in the Netherlands
that the government would do everything in its power to protect and defend Uber, given
the tailor-made tax arrangement that the Dutch State awarded in 2013. I should perhaps
remind you that Amsterdam served as the base for Uber's rogue operations around the
world. By bending over backwards to ensure that Uber located its international headquarters
here in the Netherlands, the government and many state agencies often turned a blind
eye to the harm that this Dutch-based company was causing elsewhere. The data that
I provided to the investigative journalists shows how the Dutch State operated as
a defender of Uber, routinely fending off concerns of other EU member states and advocating
Uber's interests in meetings in Brussels, while here at home the State harassed, fined
and humiliated citizens who were recruited by Uber to drive in Amsterdam, Rotterdam
and here in Den Haag. Democracies cannot function when those elected to serve the
people engage in practices that are hidden from the public view and that are withheld
from the public record.

Despite many freedom of information requests, the Dutch government still refuses to
reveal the sweet tax deal it gave to Uber, stating that information related to tax
matters is confidential. While this may be convenient for a government in the short
term, in the long term it will undermine people's trust in politicians and set the
stage for history to repeat itself. It is not my place to lecture Dutch elected representatives.
My role is to simply share what I know in the hopes that this knowledge will help
lead to a solution, a fix that ensures our democracy is strengthened and not harmed
by lobbying. I am resolute in my conviction that the public interest is served wherever
and whenever it is revealed that the common good was potentially sacrificed to the
benefit of the powerful. In those days, Uber was very powerful. We had unlimited,
disproportionate financial resources and political influence. Like many big tech companies
then and since we were too big and too powerful for any one country to take on alone.
That power was enhanced by weak transparency rules that allowed some politicians to
hide their interactions with us. This is not just a Dutch or European problem. It
is a global problem. Money continues to buy access and influence.

I blew the whistle because I realised that I helped sell people a lie. If people like
me do not speak out, there is no hope for meaningful reform. Unless politicians like
you, here in the Netherlands and around the world, and in each and every EU institution,
take drastic action to establish ethics rules that prevent the type of behaviour we
will discuss today, our democracy has as much to fear from self-inflicted wounds as
it does from despots and autocrats with tanks and bombs.

I would encourage the finance committee to push for regulation of lobbying that is
truly fit for purpose, here and at EU level. If you find what you read in the Uber
Files to be unacceptable, please remember that such practices were made possible by
a combination of ruthless greed and state failure and that many companies before and
since have succeeded in subverting democracy and the rule of law, again with little
effective resistance. We all win when we have robust rules. We all lose when those
rules favour the powerful over the powerless.

If I may add two brief additional points before I take your questions. First, in the
case of Uber, drivers were directly harmed by the lax rules that allow Uber to lobby
in secret and that led to millions of platform workers in Europe being denied minimum
social protection and basic human decency. I would encourage this committee and this
parliament to ensure that the Dutch government supports the draft European directive
on platform workers that was adopted by the European Parliament and to resist attempts
by France and others to put the profit of companies like Uber before the rights of
Dutch workers. Ladies and gentlemen, Uber trampled over European labour laws from
its Dutch base and it continues to do so today. Surely that must be a source of shame
and embarrassment for those in this house who believe that basic social protections
for workers are essential. How far will one government go to prioritise the race for
foreign direct investment?

The second of two points is that since 11 July 2022 I am no longer a lobbyist. I have
a new label; that of whistle-blower, klokkenluider, which for some also carries a
negative connotation. Whatever your position, it is imperative that we protect those
who risk everything to come forward with public interest information. The European
Union directive on whistle-blower protection, which has finally, very late, been implemented
here in the Netherlands, is a start, but there is so much more that we can and must
do to assure that those who want to speak up can do so without fear of retaliation.
I was lucky. I had incredible support from The Signals Network, a non-profit organisation
that helps support me in my whistle-blowing journey. Every whistle-blower should know
that this support exists and every government should welcome this support for its
whistle-blowers. Nothing is more important to the future of democracy than shining
a light on those who put our democracies in danger, those whose actions and greed
weaken the democracies from the inside. Shining that light in large part depends on
the courage of those who are willing to come forward and share what they know. We
should do everything in our power to protect them when they do come forward.

Dank je wel.

De voorzitter:

Thanks for your clear introduction and your very political statement. In my personal
capacity as a former European rapporteur on whistle-blowers, I fully sympathise with
that part of what you are saying.

I think it is time for the members» questions. They can be somewhat detailed, because
we have plenty of time to do it. To us, this is a means to get some information for
the debate that we will have on Thursday with the state secretary for Finance.

De heer Nijboer (PvdA):

Thank you very much for your very clear introduction, Mr MacGann. We talked with some
people who work for Uber in the Netherlands nowadays. They really underlined the detrimental
situation in which they have to work. As a social democrat, I think you should have
a decent life when you work and when you work hard. I heard about the wages, the working
conditions, the safety conditions and also the tips or tariffs. Uber does not act
according to Dutch law. I would like to ask you to elaborate on that point.

Then the point of this meeting: the tax situation of Uber. Could you elaborate somewhat
on the decision to locate Uber's headquarters in Amsterdam? What role did the tax
circumstances in the Netherlands, the tax rulings and the Dutch tax authority play?
How does this compare to other countries? Has Uber tried to negotiate with other countries
to put their headquarters there? What was that debate? What were the circumstances
that the Dutch tax authority provided to Uber?

De heer MacGann:

Thanks for the question. I should remind you that I am not qualified to speak about
the details of how Uber drivers are treated today. If you take a trip and it costs
€ 20, how much of that € 20 does the driver actually receive in gross revenue and
once they have paid for the car, petrol, insurance, parking, cleaning et cetera, et
cetera? What do they actually take home? My knowledge in many European countries is
that they barely take home even the minimum wage, in those countries where there is
a minimum wage. But I think that the experience of drivers today is of huge importance.
There is this European law, which is now being decided between the European Parliament
and the member states. So the Netherlands will be asked to take a vote on this in
the second half of this year. It is important that we maintain the presumption of
employment in the current version, so that if you believe you are self-employed, you
are your own boss, you want to be independent and you do not want to be an employee,
then you have to go and get lawyers to show that this is the case. If you listen to
Uber, other platform companies or even the French government, there should be the
presumption of entrepreneurship, so that if you are actually being treated like an
employee and being told what to do by Uber and you are not your own boss, then you
are probably not very well-paid and have to go and get a big, expensive law firm and
wait for years in the court to get justice. This new European directive is very late,
but it is very important.

Coming back to Uber's tax affairs, back in 2013 there was intense competition among
EU member states, in particular the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Ireland, where I am
from, to attract these big global companies, in particular in the tech industry, to
come and locate their headquarters in that country. Then and even now sometimes politicians
saw tech companies as a panacea for the social and economic problems that a country
was facing. At the time, we said that Uber would create of course lots and lots of
jobs, but we did not use the word «jobs» because we wanted to make sure people knew
that we would not hire these people or pay them salaries or pay for the social protection.

However, the Netherlands was successful. We used to say to the media that we located
our international headquarters in the Netherlands because it is a great country, which
it is, because people speak great English, which they do, in the big cities of course,
and because it is very central globally. But the fact is that the tax deal that the
Dutch coalition at the time offered was very hard to refuse. It is on the public record
in the media, since 2015, that Uber managed to strike a deal to pay corporate taxation
on 1% of its global profit at a 25% basis point rate, so 25% of 1% of global profit.
The other 99% of global profit would be diverted via the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas
to Uber and its shareholders. That was the deal that was struck then. Uber says the
drivers want to be self-employed. Uber spends tens of millions of dollars trying to
block reforms to support drivers. But in any case when we were approached by the media,
we did not go on the record about the details of the taxation agreement, but we also
did not deny, because the journalists actually had the facts.

The role of the Dutch tax authority at the time. When we were having office raids
and people getting arrested, executives and drivers getting harassed and fined by
ILT, the enforcement arm of the Ministry of Transport, we had the Dutch tax authority
as our champion at the EU level. In the European Union, then and I believe also now,
there is a working group on taxation between the member states. Our ambassador at
those meetings was the Dutch tax authority. When we were getting a lot of criticism
from the French in particular, because of the nature of our operations there, and
from Belgium, the Dutch tax representatives would explain that our corporate tax base
was here and that the operations in France were just marketing entities, and in Belgium
it was just marketing entities and in Spain it was just marketing entities. I think
the facts that have been revealed since then showed this was not true and that we
did actually create intellectual property in France, where all of Western European
operations were run out of Paris, not out of Amsterdam. All of UK and Nordic operations
were run out of London, not the Netherlands. The short answer is that the Dutch tax
authority was a very cooperative friend. The data shows. It is not about my recollection
or what I believe. As investigative journalists will tell you, it is about what the
data proves and does not prove. The data proves that we had regular behind the scenes
off the record conversations with the Dutch tax authority. We knew what was going
on in the EU working group on taxation. We knew what the French wanted. We knew what
the Belgians wanted. We had a very willing friend and ally in the Dutch tax authority.

De heer Nijboer (PvdA):

You talked about the corporate tax of 1% of the world income and the Dutch tax rate
of only 25%. So it is 0.25% that will be taxed. Is that still the tariff Uber pays
nowadays?

De heer MacGann:

I do not know what the status is today. On 22 October 2015, a very long article was
published in Fortune magazine, entitled «How Uber plays the tax shell game». I think
it is now behind a paywall, but I would be very happy to pass it on to the committee
if I do not get sued for copyright reasons. We were consulted about this very in-depth
investigation. We decided not to go on the record. But it explains the revenue sharing
agreements, the IP boxes et cetera, et cetera, between Uber Technologies in San Francisco,
Uber B.V. in the Netherlands and Uber C.V., which is incorporated in the Netherlands
but with headquarters in Bermuda. This is the reality of shell companies. In those
days, the Netherlands was a very attractive, beneficial tax paradise for Uber's operations.

De voorzitter:

Do you have another question, Mr Nijboer? No? Mr Alkaya from the Socialist Party.

De heer Alkaya (SP):

Mr MacGann, first of all thank you for being here, giving us the information, blowing
the whistle, and thank you for your important opening statements. What bothers me
most as a socialist is not only that it starts off with a tax deal, which is very
profitable for a multinational like Uber, but that tax authorities continue to be
cooperative in a way that you call them a «champion», a «friend» and an «ally». At
a certain point of time, there is a multilateral tax audit, which the tax authority,
de Belastingdienst, of course knows about. There is also confidential information
about Uber. It is suggested in Uber leaks that this confidential information, which
is of course very valuable for the company Uber, is being leaked by the tax authority
to the company. Could you elaborate a bit more on what happened there and how important
that was for the company, because the government now denies that there was some bad
doing in that case? Could you elaborate a bit more on that situation?

De heer MacGann:

The first thing I would say is if you look at the out-of-court settlement that Openbaar
Ministerie made with Uber to drop the criminal charges against Uber – this is March
2019 – the actual briefing document from the Office for Serious Fraud of the Dutch
government talks about these companies. It talks about Uber International B.V, Uber
Netherlands B.V. et cetera. So you have information on the reality of Uber's structure
in a different form, still a part of the Dutch State. I would also encourage you to
look at the questions that your colleague Paul Tang asked in the European Parliament
and the answer he was given by the executive Vice-President of the European Commission
with regards to Uber and the fact that Uber transfers all income outside the United
States to a Dutch holding company and that its global profits are kept artificially
low. This is not the media speaking. This is Dutch politicians asking questions from
the European Commission. The difference between the Dutch politician who asked the
question and the European Commission who answered the question is that she knows the
content of the tax rulings between the Netherlands and Uber. But you do not, your
colleague Paul Tang does not and of course the media does not. With regards to the
cooperation, I read in the newspapers that the Dutch tax authority had investigated
itself and found that it did nothing wrong. I read that in the newspaper. I do not
wish any harm to the officials of the Dutch tax authority, but I was surprised that
they did not contact me to see if there was anything in these 127,000 documents that
would be of value.

When I looked into the several hundred emails that we exchanged internally here in
the Amsterdam headquarters and with San Francisco, I saw that there are a lot of data
that show what we were concerned by. We knew in advance, via the Dutch tax authority,
what the French were asking for and what they would do in the future, from a tax perspective,
in France. We knew what the Belgian tax authority wanted from us in Belgium. So we
knew this in advance. What tax authorities in Belgium, France, Sweden, Denmark and
other countries wanted in particular, was what we called pdd: partner driver data.
We call drivers «partners», so they are «partner drivers», and tax authorities would
want the actual data, so they wanted the names, the addresses, the driving licences
and the car registration numbers of these drivers in France, Belgium, Sweden et cetera.
The authorities wanted those so they could go directly to these women and men and
tell them: first of all, you are committing fraud, because it is illegal to drive
for UberPOP, and if you are not driving for UberPOP but for UberX, UberLUX, UberBlack
or whatever it was at the time, you need to pay your income tax and you need to pay
VAT.

In my opening statement, I talk about the schizophrenia of some governments, which
were both enforcing against us and telling us in private, whether it was the French
Minister of Economy or people here in the Dutch government, that they would help us.
It was quite schizophrenic, but we knew via the Dutch tax authority what their counterparts
in member states were saying, both on a bilateral basis and on a multilateral basis.
This information and the data were not invented by some tax manager in Uber's offices.
They were based on the very close relationship that we had. I know from experience
in other European member states and other companies that when you have your foreign
direct investment agency, they do everything in their power to get you to come and
put your company in their country. And then they will continue to be a partner for
you at the international level. It was consistent, if nothing else, that the Dutch
tax authority would be our best ambassador in the EU discussions on taxation. But
the data show, demonstrate and prove that we had a very close, convenient, cosy relationship
on a day-to-day working basis with the representatives from the Dutch tax authority.

De heer Alkaya (SP):

Of course this is shocking, but how do you explain this culture at the Dutch tax authority?
Do you think it was something specific and only Uber was getting this treatment? Or
do you think that the culture came very natural to them? How else would you explain
the leakage of confidential information, the close cooperation and the Dutch tax authority
being such an ally of a multinational that other tax authorities are treating in a
wholly different way?

De heer MacGann:

I would say in general, when you do everything in your power as a government to get
a promising start-up that has 10 billion US dollars of venture capital money at a
time when interest rates are close to zero to come and locate in your country ...
Uber said it would create lots and lots of jobs in the Netherlands, which never happened.
We would bring lots and lots of taxation revenue to the Netherlands. I am not sure
if that has ever happened. There is a certain consistency, namely that certain government
agencies would continue to support you and cooperate with you. I guess that at the
time the Dutch coalition signed this tax deal with Uber, they did not know that Uber
was going to come and break the law in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy et
cetera. I cannot really speak to the culture within the tax authority. I cannot speak
to what orders they were given by the ministry of Finance or the ministry of Economics,
but there was definitely ... Let me put this another way: I wish we could have had
the same cosy relationship and regular information, in particular about closed-door
EU Council's working group meetings, with the Minister of Transport, and with Openbaar
Ministerie with regards to the criminal investigation. That would have made life a
lot easier. But all I can do, is refer you to the data that I am mentioning here.

De voorzitter:

Mr Dassen.

De heer Dassen (Volt):

Thank you, Mr MacGann, for sharing this information. I would like to ask a question
about what you said in the last part. Of course, it is shocking news that the tax
authorities were sharing information on partner countries with Uber, also regarding
the Uber tax drivers. For me, a question is: why was it important for Uber to prevent
or delay the sharing of this information, also by other countries? And, related to
that: did the Dutch tax authorities help delaying this information request? Was information
also shared about how these other countries were planning to use this information?

De heer MacGann:

Why was partner driver data important? We pretended to ourselves and to other people
that we wanted to defend the drivers, because they were the backbone of the company.
Uber was built on the backs of the men and women who drove for Uber then and who drive
and deliver for Uber today. So we did not want – this is what we said to the media
and to others – authorities getting direct access to driver data, because we thought
it was unfair that they would get fined, have their cars impounded and get charged
for the courts. And this is what happened to Uber drivers in many European countries.
All of these things happened to Uber drivers. It was easier for organisations like
ILT or the police to go after drivers than to go after the very wealthy founders of
Uber sitting in San Francisco.

The real reason, however, the truth about why we did not want the French, the Swedes,
the Danes or the Belgians getting access to partner driver data, is that if those
drivers were scared, threatened, fined or humiliated by the police or national authorities,
they would not drive on the Uber platform. Then you have no Uber. The data in particular
are relevant for 2014–2015. Then you had this UberPOP service, which we said was a
ride sharing service. It was no more legal than «snorders» are in the Dutch language,
but we knew that if governments and law enforcement were able to get access to the
drivers» data, we would not have these drivers on the Uber platform. We referred to
them as «supply». We needed supply of drivers to meet the demand of the consumers
who would pay for the Uber rides.

Then the second part of your question. So that is why we really did not want the Dutch
tax authorities to be part of the European coordination. We did not want the French,
the Belgians or others finding a way to get access to the data. Some of the written
communications or the meeting reports from our discussions with the Dutch tax authority
show that the Dutch tax authority was successful in getting France and Belgium to
delay going after partner driver data, which is what we wanted. So again, the correspondence
and the data show that with the help of the Dutch tax authority, we were able to slow
down, if not prevent, enforcement authorities in some EU member states.

De heer Dassen (Volt):

I have a question on a different note, because our Prime Minister visited Uber as
well, with Neelie Kroes. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more
on the meeting that was being held there. What was being discussed? I would like to
get a little bit more insight into that conversation.

De heer MacGann:

Yes. As I said, I was working with governments and regulators in nearly 50 countries,
so I was not always involved in the day-to-day relationship with the Dutch government,
but we had some external lobbyists doing that. We had the benefit of some former senior
politicians also having good networks to help us. When we were getting a lot of enforcement
by ILT, getting the offices raided and when our leader was taken away to the police
station for a day, we were trying to find a way to get a better dialogue with the
Dutch government. We wanted to tell them that if they could just see how consumers
loved Uber, maybe they would quickly change the rules the way we wanted them to and
stop all this enforcement. In the conversations I had with the Prime Minister's staff
at the time, in 2015, I was told: look, if ILT and Openbaar Ministerie are opening
criminal cases, it would not look good if we had a meeting between Travis Kalanick,
the founder of Uber, and Prime Minister Rutte. It would just be a bad look politically.

But then, a couple of months later, on the 2nd of February 2016, Kalanick and I hosted
Prime Minister Rutte and Ms Kroes in our headquarters in San Francisco. That was a
very positive, constructive and beneficial meeting. There are various meeting notes.
The data contain a full meeting report of this meeting, in which we got very positive
encouragement of the then Prime Minister, even though in parallel we were still being
enforced against. Drivers were being heavily enforced against by ILT and the police.
At that point, there was still an open criminal investigation by Openbaar Ministerie.

De heer Dassen (Volt):

Can you share that meeting report?

De heer MacGann:

So, this is where I answer a question with a question. On Thursday, so in a day and
a half, I have to testify to the French Parliament's special investigative committee
on the Uber Files. That is a committee with subpoena power. It is a committee with
full judicial power. If you do not go, you get up to two years in prison and you get
a big fine. They are asking me to hand over a lot of data, which I am compelled to
do. That provides me with a certain level of legal protection. I am not afraid of
getting sued by Uber. That was their first reaction when the Uber files were published.
Their lawyers in the Netherlands wrote to my lawyers to say that they would sue me
and that I would get fined billions of euros. But if I was afraid of Uber, I would
never have come forward and blown the whistle. I have been formally recognised by
the European Parliament as a whistle-blower, so I have the protection of the EU Whistleblower
Directive. I understand from the clerk and deputy clerk of this committee that this
committee does not have formal judicial investigative power, but if you ask me in
writing to provide me with certain documentation, I can promise you that I will comply
very quickly. Then if you get sued or I get sued, I am sure that we can find someone
in the media to write about it.

De voorzitter:

As the chairperson, I'll take it upon me to ask for any documents afterwards. Do you
have any more questions, Mr Dassen? No? Okay. Mr MacGann, you have just told us that
the Dutch tax authorities slowed down the information sharing as much as they could,
because Uber wanted to slow down the information sharing to set up UberPOP. That is
right, is it not? Yes. Did the tax authorities tell Uber what France, the United Kingdom
and other countries, like Denmark, would do with the driver data in case they had
them?

De heer MacGann:

My recollection ... I can go back and look into the emails, because I was either a
direct recipient of or cc to many hundreds of these emails from very senior people
in San Francisco and the tax team here in Europe. It was a constant game of cat and
mouse with tax authorities across the European Union, except of course here in the
Netherlands, were things were very clear and had a clear legal basis, if not a clear
ethical basis. But we knew the following. The UK was different. They wanted to go
after the drivers for income tax and VAT, because the rules in London and elsewhere
allowed for Uber to operate. We did not ever launch UberPOP in the UK, because we
knew that the UK police were very serious and they would shut us down within a day,
contrary to politicians in France, Belgian, Germany and the Netherlands, who threatened
us through the media but did not actually carry out any real enforcement activity.

The French, again, wanted us to shut down UberPOP. That is to say, the Minister of
Transport and the interior Minister wanted that. I remember being summoned to the
interior Minister's office and being told by him on a Monday that I would be in prison
by that following Friday if I did not shut down UberPOP. I can tell you UberPOP was
shut down in exchange for the Minister of Economy making a quick reform to the system
so we could get as many drivers as we wanted. So, the French kind of wanted us to
stop, but at the same time they wanted the VAT payments and the potential income tax
payments, and also the social security, the so-called URSSAF. That is the state agency
that is charged with making sure that people pay their social security contributions.
They knew that if we had tens of thousands of drivers in France at the time, they
were not paying their social security contributions, because Uber, this bunch of young
guys from the US, was telling them: no, you are self-employed; you are entrepreneurs,
so you do not have to pay income tax or VAT.

Uber then became a very responsible tax citizen overnight by saying to governments:
if you want VAT from the drivers, do not worry; we will be the tax collector, we will
take the VAT from the driver after we have our commission and we will be a tax collector
and do the collection and remittance of the VAT. So, that was what we did in those
days. But, from our operations, our teams in Paris and London and our lawyers – we
had very expensive law firms in all of those countries, including here in the Netherlands – we
knew exactly what different governments wanted.

To give you an illustration, in the UK parliament, the Labour politician Margaret
Hodge, the chair of the parliamentary committee that oversees Her Majesty's revenue
and customs – back then it was Her Majesty; I guess it is His Majesty now – which
is the part of the state that is responsible for tax collection, kept coming after
Uber, because she knew that Uber was doing more than just marketing in London. We
were running dozens and dozens of city operations out of London in other countries.
When HMRC finally realised in 2017 or 2018 that we were creating that intellectual
property from the UK and that therefore we were liable for corporate tax, Uber informed
the senior management in London that they all had to move to Amsterdam, which they
all did within a matter of weeks, I believe. So, different jurisdictions wanted different
things. The UK, of course, was a member of the European Union then. It was a member
of the EU Council working group on taxation matters. The buffer, the representative
between Uber B.V. and its national operations on the one hand and the other member
states on the other hand, were the representatives of the Dutch tax authority.

De voorzitter:

You talked about a lot of informal contexts. Can you elaborate on how these took part?
Was it a phone call or were there informal physical meetings? The reason I ask that
is that there has been an investigation of the Dutch tax service by the Dutch tax
service, in which no problems with the Dutch tax service were found, which is no surprise.
I have seen that happen more often. I did not find any notes or minutes that were
taken there. How was the information transferred from the tax service to Uber?

De heer MacGann:

The first thing I would say, is that my belief is that the people hired in Europe
to work on Uber's tax issues, the young taxation managers, were very confident, but
probably were used, instrumentalised and manipulated by their senior executives in
San Francisco. But the tax team in Amsterdam was very diligent. Every time there was
an informal or a formal contact with the Dutch tax authority or other tax authorities,
there was a written report. Everything was put in writing. For better or for worse,
I was a recipient of those reports. Sometimes it was a formal meeting. For example,
our tax guys went to meet the Dutch tax authority, not on current Uber operations
but on self-driving cars, which Uber had invested billions of dollars in. There were
meetings between Uber and the Dutch tax authority on potential taxation of that activity.
There were meeting notes provided from that encounter. But on the fringes of that
formal meeting, so during the coffee break, people from the Dutch tax authority would
update our tax people on the other issues.

So, it was either a formal meeting to talk about our tax status in the Netherlands,
the EU working group or something else, but the feedback was never relayed orally.
It was always done in emails, for several reasons. One reason is that their bosses
were in San Francisco, so you have a time zone difference. The second is that since
the purpose of Uber was profit, and lots of it, the taxation element of Uber's operations
was a very high profile topic and of critical importance within the company, which
is why very thorough in-depth meeting reports were written and sent. So, I do not
know what evidence the Dutch tax authority was talking about when it told the Tweede
Kamer that it had basically investigated itself and found itself to be innocent, but
I can guarantee that the tax people at Uber B.V. were not inventing things. They were
not making things up. They were writing hundreds and hundreds of reports about conversations,
meetings, phone calls or visits, including visits to our headquarters in San Francisco
by the Dutch tax authority via the Dutch consulate. Everything was in writing, everything
was accurate, everything was honest and I believe everything to be true.

De voorzitter:

Thank you. I will send a letter to ask for a number of these meeting notes to give
as examples, because they did not say anything.

The last thing you said was that meetings had been arranged by the San Francisco consulate.
There was one meeting in which the NFIA and the tax service met with Uber. What was
discussed during this meeting? Are there meeting notes available? What other meetings
with Uber were arranged by the NFIA?

De heer MacGann:

I should not and I will not speculate as to what was said in that meeting in San Francisco,
because I was not in that meeting. But in the data I do have a very in-depth and detailed
report on that meeting by the people in that meeting. I know from memory the names
of the people from the Dutch tax authority and also of the external auditors who were
present, I believe from EY. I would be happy to provide you with those minutes if
you ask for it in a formal request.

De voorzitter:

I will. Mr Alkaya has some further questions.

De heer Alkaya (SP):

If I were to draw a conclusion right now ... I will not do so yet, as the debate is
on Thursday and I still have a lot of questions for the government. But if all this
is true, and I believe it is, and if the internal research of the tax authority says
that nothing wrong was done, I think that your case is not special. This is probably
just the way in which tax authorities do things. This is the way they treat multinationals
such as Uber. Maybe Uber was a specific and special case because it was a new, hip,
trendy, up-and-coming company with a lot of potential, but these types of relationships
could have existed with other companies also. You are a very experienced man in this
field of law. Do you think the Netherlands is unique? Have you seen this way of cooperation
and interaction between government and multinationals elsewhere? Or is this the only
case in the world? Did you ever experience it in this way?

De heer MacGann:

You say I am experienced, but I think you mean that I am old. I have been doing this
for a long time. In particular, I have been working with those parts of the European
Commission that have been trying to harmonize corporate tax rates across the European
Union for decades. I do not want to make any sweeping statements, but I come from
Ireland, a country where everybody says the economy is booming, but the health system
is a disaster, the education system is no longer great and you have this very perverse
situation where the Irish government together with Apple is suing the European Commission,
because the European Commission says that Apple owes 13 billion euros to the Irish
state, to Irish taxpayers. So, to have your country go to court to say «no, we do
not want this money» is part of those practices of attracting foreign direct investment
and awarding very, very low tax rates to big tech companies, in particular US tech
companies, such as the Dutch government did by offering a tax rate of 25% on 1% of
global profits. So, the profits and all of Uber's operations outside the US were taxed
at 25% on 1%.

So, unfortunately I do not think that the situation here in the Netherlands is unique,
but I do think that you cannot have your cake and eat it. You cannot tell your people
«we will invest more in education, we will invest more in health, and we are very
sorry that you have to pay high income tax rates as employees if you are a honest
workers» and at the same time give these sweet deals, opaquely, behind the scenes,
confidentially and not on public record, to foreign companies that then get to behave
the way they behave. I think that is not just immoral, but at the end of the day not
good for people's faith in politics.

De heer Alkaya (SP):

These statements are really clear. I agree with them. What role do contacts play?
Because there are a lot of informal contacts between people on a working level, such
as informal meetings where you receive information that you probably should not have
received. But there is also interaction higher up. We have a formal European Commissioner,
Neelie Kroes, who played an important role. What can you say about her role in this
whole process? How important was that role?

De heer MacGann:

I should say that the access that we had to the working level of government here,
in particular the tax authority, was hugely beneficial to us, but also something other
companies did not have. Dutch companies do not have that sort of access and insider
information. So it was unfair, just as our access to the highest levels of government
here and elsewhere was unfair. And why did we have this access? In those days, Uber
was considered to be the hottest thing on the planet. It was very sexy. If you were
associated with Uber, you were very proud. I remember drivers coming in to be onboarded
in our offices on Vijzelstraat in Amsterdam. We gave them iPhones, we gave them hoodies
and we told them that they were part of the company. We made them feel special. And
then we lied to them. We raised the commission, we reduced and took away all of the
financial incentives that we had provided with venture capital. We said to investors:
invest money in Uber and you will get huge profits in a very short time. We said to
customers: get an Uber, it is the best way to get around your city, the cheapest taxi,
comfortable; it is great. And we said to drivers: you can make a really good living
if you come to Uber. But you cannot say those three things; the economics do not add
up. So we were always going to be lying to one of those three communities and it were
the drivers who suffered.

We had disproportionate and unfair access to power. Not just because we were on the
front-page of the newspapers, for good or bad reasons, but because we had 10 billion
dollars of venture capital funding. «If these big tech investors in Silicon Valley
are giving these young guys 10 billion, then they must know something and this must
be really something to be a part of.» And we were also getting the address books of
our lawyers, our bankers, of former this and former that, of former elected officials.
We were paying a lot of lobbyists; we were paying 90 million dollars just on lobbying
alone in one year. So we had influence. We had the influence from our friends and
our investors. We had the influence that only money can buy.

And again, this was unfair. I am not sure local Dutch start-ups had this sort of access
to Ministers, Prime Ministers, Commissioners or tax authorities. You know, before
Uber ever existed there was corruption in the world. There was corruption in Europe,
there was corruption here in the Netherlands. And since Uber's existence, there has
been corruption. Politicians come up with ethics rules and transparency registers
which lobbyists then have to sign. But the law firms do not have to sign them. The
investment bankers do not have to sign them. So, corruption will continue to change
shape until, for once and for all, people like your good selves, democratically elected
representatives of the people, put in place rules that cannot be broken, cannot be
sidestepped no matter who you are, no matter who you know, no matter who you pay and
no matter how much money you have.

We were drunk, we were high on the influence and the access that we had, even though
we were not making a single euro in profit, nor paying a single euro to the Dutch
tax authority. We created 70–80 jobs in our headquarters in Amsterdam, but the red
carpet was probably redder and longer than it has ever been for a member of the royal
family. So, I am saying that we did not invent the system, but we were able and allowed
to exploit it.

De heer Alkaya (SP):

Do you think that particularly the people higher up who you had access to were driven
by corrupt motives? Or were they motivated by their idea that they were attracting
a lot of jobs and money to the Netherlands? Or were there personal and corrupt motives?
Can you say anything about that?

De heer MacGann:

I will only talk about my own experience. I believe that the motives of the majority
of politicians I encountered were not about personal financial gain, not about corruption,
but they thought – naively, as it turns out – that by meeting with us, by taking our
calls, there would be some benefit. I had met with the Prime Minister before, when
I was working for the New York Stock Exchange. But that was legitimate; we owned the
Amsterdam Stock Exchange, we created wealth and jobs for the Netherlands. We would
go to Davos and get access to Rutte and anyone else we needed to. To have that same
access when you are at Uber, however, with no tax revenue and hardly any employees,
was certainly strange.

You asked me earlier about a former Dutch politician who is also a former Vice-President
of the European Commission. I think there was a sense among people ... I do not want
to say too much, because there is an ongoing investigation by the anti-fraud office
of the European Union. Again, if I am given written questions I will provide not my
opinion – I think nobody is interested in my opinion – but the relevant data.

I have the greatest respect for people who do what you do for a living. But this is
why ethical, regulated lobbying is very important. Because unless you have access
to the real information, politicians are going to continue taking calls from the guy
who raised all these billions for Google or taking calls from an investment banker
or a senior partner in a law firm who says: hey, about this Travis Kalanick guy, you
know, these guys are going to create so many jobs and so much tax revenue, you should
meet with him and his people. So I think politicians have a very, very difficult job,
but it is important for you to have more information, not less, as long as people
like me have to go through formal, public, reported, documented proceedings in order
to get access to you to provide that information and for it to be on public record.

So in conclusion to your question: I met Ministers, Commissioners, presidents, Prime
Ministers. I was shocked that they would even let me into the room. I do not believe
that any of the senior politicians I met were looking to get access to Uber for personal
gain. Some of them subsequently did become consultants, advisors, paid advisors. That
is a different category.

De heer Dassen (Volt):

One last question. You talked about transparency and registers. How could this lobbying
and everything surrounding it, have been signalled earlier or been prevented? What
is your take on that?

De heer MacGann:

I have my ideas. I have been doing this for almost three decades. I do not think I
will be doing it for much longer, because I am not sure any company would want to
hire me to do the job, given that I am now a whistle-blower. But I think that politicians ...
When I say «politicians» I mean people with decision-making power: the head of the
tax authority, the head of the completion authority, the Minister, the Secretary of
State, the Prime Minister. These people have to listen to their officials, their advisors,
the civil servants who are paid by the taxpayers. It is fine to have a meeting that
is on record and the notes should be published. If you have a phone conversation,
there should be a record of that phone conversation. If you send text messages, you
should realise that these should be as transparent as the formal meetings you have.
I mean, the number of text message exchanges and WhatsApp exchanges I have had with
senior government Ministers, Prime Ministers, presidents ... The advantage of iMessage,
or the disadvantage if you want to hide it from the public record, is that the backup
goes back years and years. I think you have to put everything on public record. To
any company that comes to you and wants a private meeting, wants a dinner or a lunch,
wants to see you at the weekend you say no. Any lawyer who comes from one of the big
law firms and says «I represent this company or that company, let's have a drink,
let's have dinner, let's have a meeting, but I am a lawyer so it has to be off the
record because of attorney-client privilege»: that is just a form of corruption. So,
do not just put your lobbyists on the transparency register. I have paid millions
to law firms on behalf of Uber and other companies for political access and political
lobbying. Also investment bankers; I have e-mails in the Uber data from Barclays Investment
Bank, asking me not if I want to meet Prime Minister David Cameron, but which week
would be suitable to meet him, «and here is his mobile number». You cannot have one
law for public policy professionals and then let the lawyers say «but this is not
in the public interest, it is confidential», or let the bankers say: we do not want
the public to see this; they would not understand it and it has to stay between us.

So, I think that politicians have even more responsibility on their shoulders now,
in the world of technology. And I think that you have to listen to and empower your
civil servants better. And I think that if you pay politicians better and if you pay
civil servants better, this is also an incentive to do one job, not two, not three,
and to do so in a democratic and very transparent manner.

De voorzitter:

We will take a few more questions. I want to go back to that quite amazing tax deal.
So, you have global profits outside of the US. Within the US they are taxed within
the US, but everything outside of the US formally is being taxed in the Netherlands,
though obviously there is a sort of headquarter in the UK as well. And you have a
tax deal with the Dutch tax authorities which says that if you make € 1,000 profit,
only € 10 is taxed and you only pay € 2.50 as tax. That is basically the deal that
you get. And for the rest, you can go to the Cayman Islands, you can go the Seychelles
or whatever you want to.

Now my question. Did other authorities, the other foreign tax authorities ever know
about this tax ruling? How did they react?

De heer MacGann:

Until the OECD reforms that governments have now endorsed become law in the European
Union and here in the Netherlands, those tax practices remain permitted although,
as I said, I believe them to be immoral and unethical. I do not know to what extent
the French, the Belgians or the Italians knew the actual contents of the tax ruling,
or whether the Luxembourgers were sharing the tax rulings that they had with Fiat
or Starbucks, or the Irish the rulings with Apple and now Facebook, and Google and
TikTok. There is still this competition. We say: it is because they are super educated
and speak great English. I think we are taking our citizens for fools.

But France, Belgium and others, as I said, in my experience ... And the data, all
of the reports I was getting from our teams in these countries, show this. It is not
because the Netherlands was allowed to offer this sweet tax arrangement to Uber that
the other member states would take it on the chin, sit back and stay quiet. And as
Uber's operations grew, the French, Brits and others knew that what we were doing
in Paris and London was not just sales and marketing. All of our operations in western
Europe and subsequently in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, were managed by, directed
by and led from Paris. So I think that even if the agreement with the Dutch state
allowed us to pay our corporate tax in the European Union in one country, it did not
mean that what we were saying to the tax authorities in France was accurate or true.
It would actually imply, and the data does more than imply this, that we were not
telling the truth. In another form of English: that we were lying to the French tax
authorities.

Now I think that this is of course not the problem for this finance committee or for
the Dutch government. But because there were these smaller member states like the
Irish, the Dutch, the Luxembourgers that were so good at negotiating these sweet tax
deals, the bigger member states, such as France, the southern states, Italy, Spain,
were angry that all these big tax firms in particular with huge potential were going
to these small member states. And they put up a lot of opposition on a day-to-day
basis. I think this is why in the meeting reports that we got from the debriefings
that we had on a regular basis from the Dutch tax authority, you read who is happy
and who is not, what the French wanted on a particular day and in a particular month,
what the Belgians wanted. I think it was destabilizing for the European Union to allow
the member states to have this tax competition against each other. I hope that the
OECD rules come into enforcement very soon.

De voorzitter:

How did the Netherlands solve the issue with France? France obviously claimed that
Uber had a taxable presence, a «vaste inrichting» in Dutch, in France, whereas the
Netherlands claimed it did not. But France was pretty insistent. At some point, the
Dutch tax authorities seemed to have dropped that claim. How did that go?

De heer MacGann:

I do not want to give you inaccurate information. I am sure that somebody at Uber
would immediately call a journalist if I gave you information that is not factual.
I will have to go back and look in the data. I did some preparation for this meeting,
because there is so much data relating to the tax issues, but I do not have an exhaustive
recollection. I know that we found some sort of montage, some sort of technique, some
sort of ploy, to try and keep the French quiet, by increasing the payments that we
would make to the French company, Uber France SAS, so that there would be a small
level of taxable income, from a corporate tax perspective. But it was peanuts, compared
to what Uber was generating in profits in France at the time and to what Uber is generating
in profits today, despite being called illegal by the government. I know the data
we received from the Dutch tax authorities does have precise answers on that. The
Dutch tax authorities did not receive emails from the French and then just pressed
forward to the tax guys at Uber B.V. It was during formal meetings, phone conversations
and informal meetings that the information was provided. It was very diligently put
in writing by our people, so that we would have a formal record of it. Our team in
France needed to know what to say to the French tax authorities, because they were
also raiding our offices. We did not just hit the kill switch in Amsterdam. We had
kill switches all over the place, because if it was not the transport police, it was
the tax authorities. If it was not the tax authorities, it was the anti-fraud squad.
If it was not them, it was some other part of government. Having to hide data from
law enforcement was more of a daily practice, unfortunately.

De voorzitter:

Uber was not only aware of what was going on between the two tax authorities, but
was actively involved in creating the solution?

De heer MacGann:

I think the data shows that we had input into what the Dutch tax authority was subsequently
saying to its counterparts. I believe that we were informally invited to make suggestions.
It was one thing for the Dutch tax authority to come to us and relay the concerns
or the complaints of other tax authorities. We needed to help them to help us, if
you like.

De voorzitter:

You were working together with the Dutch tax authority to make sure you would pay
as little as possible in France at the time. Were there any other countries whose
information was shared by the Dutch tax authority?

De heer MacGann:

Again, I do not want to speculate. But from my recollection of what was actually in
the data I would say definitely Belgium and I think also Denmark. And, both in the
EU working group on tax and bilaterally, the tax authority of the United Kingdom.
They were in the EU at the time.

De voorzitter:

You had a meeting with Mr Rutte. Were tax issues ever discussed in the meeting you
had with Prime Minister Mark Rutte?

De heer MacGann:

We did not discuss tax issues. When we hosted him on 2 February 2016, the then chief
executive of Uber did not show up, because he was unhappy that Mr Rutte was not doing
more to push back against the enforcement by the ILT. The meeting notes from that
meeting show what the Prime Minister said and what we said to the Prime Minister,
but there was no discussion about tax.

He was very upbeat, very positive, very complimentary, and he encouraged us to go
further. Then he specifically named Ministers in his government that we should sit
down with to try and work things out, but this was with regard to enforcement against
UberPOP and not about any tax problems.

De voorzitter:

While the public prosecutor was investigating Uber for being a criminal organization,
you suggested that Uber should have to sit down with Dutch Ministers to solve the
situation?

De heer MacGann:

Yes.

De voorzitter:

This is really incredible.

De heer MacGann:

I learned from the investigative journalists. It was fascinating to work with all
these journalists. Again, all these laptops and all the notebooks: I have them to
navigate, of course. Investigative journalists look through stuff and they decide
what they think is in the public interest. A lot of the things they found were published
in articles. Some was not, because either it would make headlines but was not necessary
in the public interest, or they simply did not have the time and the resources to
go through things in depth. The point I want make is that the investigative journalists
from the Guardian and other media organizations told me: Mark, it is not what you
think happened that matters and it is not your opinion that matters. It is what the
data that you possess shows and proves that matters. When you, Mr chair, ask me in
this finance committee of the Dutch parliament what the Prime Minister said in the
meeting, my answer is: I only know what he said in the meeting, not just because I
was sitting in that meeting, but because the meeting report was written and circulated
immediately after the meeting. What he said was therefore in that meeting report.

De voorzitter:

I think I will ask for that meeting report.

There is still one point I would like to ask a question about. For 18 months after
leaving the European Commission, Ms Kroes had a prohibition to lobby. That is a very
clear legal prohibition in the EU. You are asking for clear rules. There are very
few clear rules, but that rule was pretty clear. She twice asked for the prohibition
to be lifted, but the then President of the Commission said to Ms Kroes: no, it will
not be lifted. Could you elaborate on what she did for Uber in the 18 months during
which you knew she was prohibited from lobbying? Did you go out for dinner with her?
Did she ask things, did she lobby politicians for you? What kind of help did she provide
to Uber during that period?

De heer MacGann:

Again, this is not a courtroom. I am here and Ms Kroes is not here. Strangely, although
we used to talk on a very regular basis, I have had no news from her since July 2022.
Notwithstanding all of that, the investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office should
show, depending on how long it takes them, the evidence, which is in emails, text
messages et cetera. That started directly with Ms Kroes, or via her then chief of
staff, around late spring, early summer of 2014. The Code of Conduct of Commissioners
has been revised since, but the one that was applicable to her stated an 18 months»
period. I have to say that it was one rule applied to the women and one rule applied
to the boys. Other commissioners did not get as much abuse from President Juncker
or as many obstacles as she did.

But the main point is: did she yes or no breach that code of conduct? It is not for
me to say, I am not an expert. I have provided the data to OLAF. I hope they do a
good job. I hope they do a quick job. The slight complicating factor is that they
report to the European Commission, so if they act as an independent agency, they should
be allowed to publish information that is potentially embarrassing to the European
Commission, but that is ultimately for them to decide.

The reason why I am also hesitating is that Ms Kroes did have a formal role, I believe
a non-paid role, as pointed out by Prime Minister Rutte, as special envoy for start-ups.
You then have to decide: was she wearing a hat as former Vice-President of the European
Commission, or was she wearing a hat of special envoy and, similarly to what the Dutch
tax authority was doing, did she believe it was her job to do everything in her power
to help Uber, to give Uber access, to lobby for Uber et cetera? I think that is a
question for others to answer, but I certainly benefitted from a very close relationship
and regular contact with former Vice-President Kroes during my time at Uber. As I
said, the relationship predated me and survived me, since I resigned from the company.
I know I am giving you a long Irish answer to a very direct Dutch question, but I
would invite you to make a specific request in writing. I will then do my democratic
duty.

De voorzitter:

I will happily do that. I have just one more question there. I do not believe that
there were different rules for the boys and the girls. I personally know John Dalli,
who resigned from the same Commission. Anyone may start laughing, but I did some research
in Malta and I had some interesting match with him as well. So, do not worry that
there were only girls doing naughty things. I do insist because Uber was anything
but a start-up. You just said they had a 10 billion seat capital. At the time you
were having contact with Ms Kroes, Uber had a value of well over 50 billion. Whatever
you think is a start-up, it would be the second or third biggest company in the Dutch
stock exchange, so it would not qualify as a start-up by any definition I know of.
It does not matter whether you see her as an envoy or what, but could you elaborate
on what kind of contacts you had and on what she was doing?

De heer MacGann:

Again, the data shows that she was very helpful in acting as an intermediary with
the most senior levels of the Dutch government at that time.

De voorzitter:

She was acting as an intermediary to a number of Ministers and state secretaries,
if I understand this?

De heer MacGann:

Yes.

De voorzitter:

Also to the ILT or the public prosecutor?

De heer MacGann:

My lawyer has not grabbed my arm yet, so I am inviting her to grab my arm and say:
stop talking. I do not want to undermine any investigation. Nonetheless, the data
that I possess shows that the person in question was backchannelling with Dutch government
Ministers and with the Prime Minister, not with the working level of ILT and not with
the public prosecutor. We are talking about people at the most senior level in the
Dutch government and the European Commission, during my time. I can only speak of
the data that I have. These were communications directly to me and from me. When you
were getting enforcement form ILT, when you were getting dawn raids, when you were
getting people arrested or when you were getting drivers harassed, it was great to
have this privileged access that we had at the time. I should have said that she was
also present at the meeting with the Prime Minister on 2 February 2016 that I referred
to. You will see reference to that in the meeting notes.

De voorzitter:

Thank you very much for coming, Mr MacGann, and for providing clear answers. You could
become a Dutch government Minister, because they are not as clear in answering as
you are, but that is my personal view.

I know that the situation of a whistle-blower is not an easy one, so if we can help
you in that, we will. We cannot decide on it here today, for we need the majority
of the committee, but I think a number of us will ask the committee to ask you for
a few documents in writing. We would also like to be updated on what is happening
in the French parliament. Feel free to get in touch with us.

Again, thank you for coming. I also thank the public for coming and listening to this
discussion. I can tell you that this discussion is not over yet.

Sluiting 18.36 uur.