Sources: Uber exec obtained medical records of rider raped in India in '14, and was fired only after media inquiries; Kalanick, Michael doubted victim's claims
Sources say Eric Alexander carried around for a year confidential information about a woman who was assaulted during a ride in India in 2014.
Context & Ripple Effects
This report lands mid-way through Uber's 2017 reckoning: in February, Kalanick told staff that former US AG Eric Holder had been hired to probe sexism allegations, and by March a separate Seoul escort-bar visit involving Kalanick and Emil Michael had produced an HR complaint and an allegation that Michael asked a witness to lie.
The new claim — that Asia-Pacific chief Eric Alexander carried a rape victim's confidential medical records for a year and was dismissed only once reporters started asking — extends that pattern from culture to conduct, and directly precedes Uber's decision to hire O'Melveny & Myers to investigate the records handling, including whether bribes were involved.
First-order effects
- Eric Alexander loses his job, but only after media inquiries forced the issue — meaning Uber's internal processes failed to surface or act on his possession of the victim's medical files for roughly a year.
- Kalanick and Emil Michael are now publicly tied to doubting the victim's account, compounding the credibility damage both already carried from the Holder probe and the Seoul HR complaint.
Second-order effects
- Uber is forced to commission the O'Melveny & Myers review with a bribery focus, widening the legal exposure beyond one executive to how the company handled the victim's data and possibly sought to manage the fallout.
- The woman's lawsuit gains factual momentum from the report, pushing Uber toward the settlement of her claims over the accessed medical files reached later that year.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — misconduct surfacing through journalists rather than HR or compliance — the board's case for stripping Kalanick of operational control strengthens, making outside counsel investigations a standing feature of Uber's governance rather than a one-off.
- Executive access to rider data becomes a litigation and reputational liability in its own right, pressuring platforms to treat internal data access with the same controls they apply to external breaches.
The trend: Uber's 2017 crisis is escalating from cultural complaints into documented executive misconduct, with each media-driven disclosure forcing new investigations and narrowing Kalanick's room to lead.