One of Uber’s main early investors Benchmark Capital is suing the ride hailing app’s former CEO.
The venture capital firm alleges Uber founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick breached contractual obligations to stack the Uber board in his favor.
This was done to ‘clear the path for his eventual return as CEO — all to the detriment of Uber’s stockholders, employees, driver-partners and customers,’ the lawsuit states.
Kalanick committed fraud, it said, by convincing the board to approve the addition of three new board seats that Kalanick himself would have authority to appoint.
This was done while withholding information from shareholders about certain events which would then lead to his forced resignation earlier this year.
Benchmark was one of the most vocal investors calling for Kalanick to resign.
"Kalanick knew Benchmark never would have approved (of) the three new Board seats if Benchmark had known the truth about Kalanick’s prior conduct," the lawsuit claims.
"Kalanick also understood that these matters, once revealed, would likely force him to resign as Uber’s CEO, and thus sought to grant himself a way to play an ongoing leadership role at Uber once the truth came out."
Benchmark goes on to claim that immediately after resigning as CEO Kalanick then grabbed one of the three vacant board seats for himself and declined to sign an agreement that the two remaining seats would be filled by board members who are ‘independent, experienced, unbiased and diverse, and subject to the approval of all then-current directors other than one.’
A spokesperson for Kalanick said the legal action is ‘riddled with lies.’
"Travis will continue to act in the interests of Uber and all of its stakeholders and is confident that these entirely baseless claims will be rejected."
