Startups

Hong Kong Police Raid Uber Offices, Arrest Drivers

Comment

Image Credits: eskay (opens in a new window) / Shutterstock (opens in a new window)

Uber’s worldwide expansion plans have hit yet another legal bump. Five Uber drivers were arrested in Hong Kong yesterday, allegedly for operating without a hire car permit and driving without proper insurance. Two of Uber’s local offices were also raided and three staff members detained, according to the the South China Morning Post.

Hong Kong police senior inspector Bruce Hung told reporters that undercover police officers used an app to call five cars and arrested the drivers after reaching their destination.

The arrests come a few weeks after protests against Uber and other car-hailing apps began to intensify, with traditional taxi drivers claiming that their counterparts operate without a hire car permit. During a demonstration at the end of July, To Sun-tong, a spokesman for the Motor Transport Workers General Union, said some of its members had seen their revenue drop by 20 percent due to the proliferation of car-hailing apps like Uber.

While Uber checks if drivers have mandated third-party insurance as part of its standard screening process, it is unclear is if the company requires—or plans to require—drivers to hold a hire car permit.

In a statement to the press, Harold Li, Uber’s North Asia spokesman, said:

“Hongkongers have made it clear that they want more, better transportation options in our city, and Uber is deeply committed to making sure they have unrestricted access to safe, reliable, quality options. Drivers who partner with Uber do so to take advantage of the flexibility and earning potential our lead generation technology allows. Uber ensures that all rides are covered by insurance, and all drivers on the platform undergo an extensive background check. We stand by our driver-partners 100% and welcome the opportunity to work closely with the authorities towards updated regulations that put the safety and interests of riders and drivers first.”

The company has previously described Hong Kong as its “regional headquarters,” while the  government welcomed Uber with open arms. InvestHK, an agency set up to attract foreign investment, presented the company as a “success story” on its website.

That page was removed yesterday, however, and InvestHK posted a statement saying “there are legal ways in Hong Kong for companies to offer car rental services via mobile applications, but not all mobile car booking applications can meet the legal requirements in Hong Kong. As Uber is now being investigated for allegedly operating outside of the legal ambit, as a standard procedure InvestHK has removed the case study from its website.”

Reportedly valued at over $50 billion after its most recent funding round, Uber’s international expansion plans have come with a series of headaches as it runs into legal issues and opposition by traditional taxi operators in new markets. The most high-profile of these were demonstrations in France that turned violent as taxi drivers protested UberPOP. Similar to their Hong Kong counterparts, cabbies were upset that UberPOP uses drivers who have not applied or paid for a special license. The service was later suspended in France.

Part of the problem is that there are very few laws regulating Uber’s business model, creating confusion for the company and governments. Uber’s stance that it isn’t subject to the same rules as traditional taxi companies because it is a technology platform that connects drivers and passengers instead of operating its own fleet of vehicles has been rejected by city authorities in India, China, and South Korea.

One country that has taken a more conciliatory (and arguably pragmatic) approach is the Philippines, which introduced regulatory framework in May specifically designed for ride-sharing apps like Uber.

More TechCrunch

Tags

Expressable is a platform that offers one-on-one virtual sessions with speech language pathologists.

Expressable brings speech therapy into the home

The French Secretary of State for the Digital Economy as of this year, Marina Ferrari, revealed this year’s laureates during VivaTech week in Paris. According to its promoters, this fifth…

The biggest French startups in 2024 according to the French government

Spotify is notifying customers who purchased its Car Thing product that the devices will stop working after December 9, 2024. The company discontinued the device back in July 2022, but…

Spotify to shut off Car Thing for good, leading users to demand refunds

Elon Musk’s X is preparing to make “likes” private on the social network, in a change that could potentially confuse users over the difference between something they’ve favorited and something…

X should bring back stars, not hide ‘likes’

The FCC has proposed a $6 million fine for the scammer who used voice-cloning tech to impersonate President Biden in a series of illegal robocalls during a New Hampshire primary…

$6M fine for robocaller who used AI to clone Biden’s voice

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Is it…

Tesla lobbies for Elon and Kia taps into the GenAI hype

Crowdaa is an app that allows non-developers to easily create and release apps on the mobile store. 

App developer Crowdaa raises €1.2M and plans a US expansion

Back in 2019, Canva, the wildly successful design tool, introduced what the company was calling an enterprise product, but in reality it was more geared toward teams than fulfilling true…

Canva launches a proper enterprise product — and they mean it this time

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 isn’t just an event for innovation; it’s a platform where your voice matters. With the Disrupt 2024 Audience Choice Program, you have the power to shape the…

2 days left to vote for Disrupt Audience Choice

The United States Department of Justice and 30 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, for alleged monopolistic practices. Live Nation and…

Ticketmaster antitrust lawsuit could give new hope to ticketing startups

The U.K. will shortly get its own rulebook for Big Tech, after peers in the House of Lords agreed Thursday afternoon to pass the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer bill…

‘Pro-competition’ rules for Big Tech make it through UK’s pre-election wash-up

Spotify’s addition of its AI DJ feature, which introduces personalized song selections to users, was the company’s first step into an AI future. Now, Spotify is developing an alternative version…

Spotify experiments with an AI DJ that speaks Spanish

Call Arc can help answer immediate and small questions, according to the company. 

Arc Search’s new Call Arc feature lets you ask questions by ‘making a phone call’

After multiple delays, Apple and the Paris area transportation authority rolled out support for Paris transit passes in Apple Wallet. It means that people can now use their iPhone or…

Paris transit passes now available in iPhone’s Wallet app

Redwood Materials, the battery recycling startup founded by former Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, will be recycling production scrap for batteries going into General Motors electric vehicles.  The company announced Thursday…

Redwood Materials is partnering with Ultium Cells to recycle GM’s EV battery scrap

A new startup called Auggie is aiming to give parents a single platform where they can shop for products and connect with each other. The company’s new app, which launched…

Auggie’s new app helps parents find community and shop

Andrej Safundzic, Alan Flores Lopez and Leo Mehr met in a class at Stanford focusing on ethics, public policy and technological change. Safundzic — speaking to TechCrunch — says that…

Lumos helps companies manage their employees’ identities — and access

Remark trains AI models on human product experts to create personas that can answer questions with the same style of their human counterparts.

Remark puts thousands of human product experts into AI form

ZeroPoint claims to have solved compression problems with hyper-fast, low-level memory compression that requires no real changes to the rest of the computing system.

ZeroPoint’s nanosecond-scale memory compression could tame power-hungry AI infrastructure

In 2021, Roi Ravhon, Asaf Liveanu and Yizhar Gilboa came together to found Finout, an enterprise-focused toolset to help manage and optimize cloud costs. (We covered the company’s launch out…

Finout lands cash to grow its cloud spend management platform

On the heels of raising $102 million earlier this year, Bugcrowd is making good on its promise to use some of that funding to make acquisitions to strengthen its security…

Bugcrowd, the crowdsourced white-hat hacker platform, acquires Informer to ramp up its security chops

Google is preparing to build what will be the first subsea fiber-optic cable connecting the continents of Africa and Australia. The news comes as the major cloud hyperscalers battle it…

Google to build first subsea fiber-optic cable connecting Africa with Australia

The Kia EV3 — the new all-electric compact SUV revealed Thursday — illustrates a growing appetite among global automakers to bring generative AI into their vehicles.  The automaker said the…

The new Kia EV3 will have an AI assistant with ChatGPT DNA

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, was working improperly for several hours on Thursday in Europe. At first, we noticed it wasn’t possible to perform a web search at all. Now it…

Bing’s API was down, taking Microsoft Copilot, DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT’s web search feature down too

If you thought autonomous driving was just for cars, think again. The “autonomous navigation” market — where ships steer themselves guided by AI, resulting in fuel and time savings —…

Autonomous shipping startup Orca AI tops up with $23M led by OCV Partners and MizMaa Ventures

The best known mycoprotein is probably Quorn, a meat substitute that’s fast approaching its 40th birthday. But Finnish biotech startup Enifer is cooking up something even older: Its proprietary single-cell…

Meet the Finnish biotech startup bringing a long-lost mycoprotein to your plate

Silo, a Bay Area food supply chain startup, has hit a rough patch. TechCrunch has learned that the company on Tuesday laid off roughly 30% of its staff, or north…

Food supply chain software maker Silo lays off ~30% of staff amid M&A discussions

Featured Article

Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

Meanwhile, women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by irresponsible AI.

1 day ago
Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

If you’ve ever wanted to apply to Y Combinator, here’s some inside scoop on how the iconic accelerator goes about choosing companies.

Garry Tan has revealed his ‘secret sauce’ for getting into Y Combinator