Venture investment fund Benchmark, at one time became one of the first investors of the transport startup Uber, sued the co-founder and former CEO of the company Travis Kalanik. This was first reported by the online edition of Axios.

The fund's lawyers, who at the beginning of summer made every effort to send Kalanik to resign, accused the businessman of fraud, as well as violation of contractual and fiduciary obligations. Benchmark is sure that Kalanik violated the law, trying to get back to the post of CEO, from which he was forced to leave in June. If the court sits on the side of the fund, Kalanik will lose his seat on Uber's board of directors, and with him - and the last hope of returning to the management of the firm.

At the heart of the claim, Benchmark Capital - illegal, according to the plaintiff, the decision to expand the board of directors of Uber from 8 to 11 members, adopted in June 2016. Then Kalanik was given the opportunity to choose who would occupy the three new seats. As a result, he transferred one of them to himself, having lost his place, relying on him as the general director. The other two are still empty.

Benchmark claims that they would never agree to grant Kalanik the right to choose candidates for new seats on the board of directors if they were aware of the problems in the company related to the encouraging sexual harassment in the team and gender discrimination. In early June, Uber dismissed 20 employees as part of an internal investigation related to allegations of sexual harassment. In addition, the company sued the developing unmanned vehicles division Alphabet (owner of Google), Waymo. The lawsuit alleges that previously worked in Google Anthony Lewandowski stole the search engine and used them to create a self-managed car in Uber.