Brisbane cancels Beam contract after accusations of misleading councils

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Brisbane City Council has cancelled its contract with e-scooter company beam after a whistleblower claimed the company has significantly under-reported the size of its fleet.

Transcript

00:00Well, the Singapore-based company has been in hot water over these accusations from the

00:06last few months.

00:07Now, the allegations suggest that Beam had been intentionally deploying additional e-scooters

00:14into cities which were exceeding the maximum capacity that city councils had allocated.

00:20It's also suggested that Beam had been manipulating data for the monitoring systems that were

00:25in place that were reported back to those city councils, and that's why they didn't

00:29realise that this was happening for quite some time.

00:32Now, Brisbane City Council has confirmed that they have cancelled their contract with Beam

00:37as of last Friday over these allegations.

00:40It does follow the Wellington City Council in New Zealand, which has also cancelled its

00:44licensing agreement with Beam as of last Friday, as well as Auckland Council, which has suspended

00:50its agreement with Beam from last Tuesday.

00:53Now, in statements that have been released by those respective councils, they have alleged

00:58that after conducting their own independent auditing reports, they found that the daily

01:02maximum capacity of e-scooters within each of their city council areas had exceeded e-scooter

01:08capacity by about 100 scooters, so it was quite concerning, and they say that that was

01:14a reason behind cancelling and suspending those licensing agreements.

01:17Now, for companies to operate e-scooters, they have to have licensing agreements, and

01:22that includes paying registration fees for each of those vehicles in their respective

01:27cities, as well as a portion of the fares that are paid by riders are then contributed

01:31to those city councils.

01:33Now, the tech firm operates in more than 30 cities across Australia, and on its website

01:38it actually still lists Brisbane as one of those cities that it supplies to, but the

01:43ABC understands that the Brisbane City Council has not only terminated its contract, but

01:48it is conducting its own internal investigations.

01:51The ABC has also reached out to Beam for additional comment, but this has certainly raised concerns

01:57across the country in city councils that do have Beam licensing agreements in place, as

02:02those internal investigations do continue.

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