The German economics professor Justus Haucap rejects the accusation that he placed articles in newspapers on behalf of the transport service provider Uber in return for payment. He only wrote a study for two institutes on behalf of Uber. However, Haucap is also self-critical.
The former chairman of the Monopolies Commission, Justus Haucap, has denied allegations that he placed newspaper articles on behalf of the global taxi service provider Uber and collected money for them. “I have never published a newspaper article commissioned by Uber in any medium,” said the economics professor of the “Rheinische Post”. The investigative network of NDR, WDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” allegedly determined the allegations from documents of the US group that were leaked to the journalists. According to this, Haucap would have contractually committed to publishing such articles as part of a paid study for Uber on the impact of digitization in the taxi market.
The Düsseldorf professor admitted that he was the author of a study that the US group had commissioned from the two private research institutes DICE Consult GmbH and DIW Econ GmbH. Haucap is a partner of DICE Consult. The work, which according to employees of these institutes was carried out independently and “ultimately with no results”, was published in 2015. The economist only admitted that he had created a newsletter for the client, but no newspaper article. “Unfortunately, I can no longer find out today what happened to this newsletter,” added the professor. In the contract with Uber, it was only agreed that the results should also be published in the press.
The reporter team from NDR, WDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” suggests in its article that a guest article by Haucap in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (“FAZ”) on December 6, 2014 was related to the order from the transport service provider. Haucap rejects this: “The newspaper article was not commissioned by the Uber company, but resulted from the quintessence of a report by the Monopolies Commission on the taxi market. The article in the “FAZ” appeared before the contract was signed with Uber.” It was signed on December 19, 2014.
According to Haucap, the aim of the Uber study was to quantify the results of the report by the Monopolies Commission, i.e. to put them in concrete numbers. “The idea that Uber tried to buy an opinion is fundamentally wrong,” asserts the economist. However, he would no longer write such an article in such a close temporal context.
Meanwhile, according to the AFP news agency, lobbyist Mark MacGann has identified himself as an informant. MacGann, who led lobbying for the brokerage platform in Europe, Africa and the Middle East from 2014 to 2016, revealed to The Guardian newspaper on Monday that he was the one who provided her with the incriminating documents about the US company asked.
According to him, he decided to take this step because Uber “is breaking the law in dozens of countries” and “has deceived people”. The documents, reported by several European media outlets, reveal Uber’s aggressive lobbying campaign in its bid to enter the European market.
