Former Uber Chief Sued for Fraud

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 Venture capital firm Benchmark Capital is suing former Uber Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick to force him off the board of the ride services company and rescind his ability to fill three board seats, according to the lawsuit. 

 The lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Kalanick of concealing a range of misdeeds from the board and scheming to retain power at the company even after he was forced to resign as chief executive of Uber in June following a series of scandals.  

The company is currently seeking a new CEO. Benchmark's lawsuit marks a rare instance of a Silicon Valley investor suing a central figure at one of its own start-ups. 

The well-regarded venture firm was an early investor in Uber and said in the lawsuit that owns 13 percent of Uber and controls 20 percent of the voting power. Kalanick issued a statement calling the lawsuit "completely without merit and riddled with lies and false allegations."

 The litigation in Delaware court opens another chapter in a saga of woe at Uber that has cast doubt on the future of the world's most highly valued startup company, worth $68 billion. 

 Uber's troubles include a trade-secret lawsuit by Alphabet Inc's Waymo unit that led to the departure of a star engineer and hobbled Uber's self-driving car program; sexual harassment allegations that led to a major internal investigation and the dismissal of several top executives; and alleged misconduct by Kalanick and other executives in handling a rape committed by an Uber driver in India. 

 Benchmark, which holds one of the seats on the Uber board, said that it never would have given Kalanick the three extra seats if it had known about his "gross mismanagement and other misconduct at Uber," the lawsuit said. 

 Lawrence Hamermesh, an expert on Delaware corporate law at Widener University Delaware Law School, said that as a director of the company Kalanick would have been required to disclose what he knew to other shareholders before a vote.

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