Investigations are underway against the Berlin car sharing provider Miles on suspicion of illegally avoiding parking fees. As the Berlin police announced on Wednesday, the Berlin State Criminal Police Office, the police in North Rhine-Westphalia and the Austrian police searched the offices of the provider as well as companies cooperating with it and the apartments of the managing directors on behalf of the public prosecutor.
According to the police, it is about suspicion of “gang-related and commercial fraud and computer fraud, gang-related and commercial falsification of technical records and document suppression.” It is estimated that possible damage of up to 30 million euros in unpaid parking fees for the state of Berlin.
Miles confirmed the investigation. A search took place “in which we cooperated fully and disclosed all requested data sets and documents to the investigating authorities,” said a spokeswoman for the company, de, business magazine “Capital”. In Berlin, Miles “pays the parking fees automatically to the districts via so-called cell phone parking.” Miles did not want to release any further information given the ongoing proceedings.
For Miles, which has developed into one of the largest German car sharing providers with vehicles in a number of cities in recent years, the investigation is bringing an old conflict to a head. The company, which views its services as part of the city’s mobility offering, has repeatedly complained that in some places it has to pay the same parking fees as private car owners. Depending on the city, Miles negotiates very different models for the use of parking space.
In Berlin, the parking fees incurred are automatically determined by a third-party company and paid to the authorities. The basis is telemetry data in which the vehicles send their location data and the length of the parking time is transmitted. According to the police, there is now a suspicion that the company may have partly manipulated this telemetry data in order to avoid fees.
If the allegations against the company are confirmed, the federal government would probably also have to deal with the case. Just a few weeks ago, the Ministry of Transport promised the company funding for new electric cars amounting to almost one million euros. That would then be put to the test.
According to the police, the public order offices and the fines office noticed “significant deviations in the reliability of the payment of parking fees” as well as “an exceptionally high number of parking fee violations” by Miles vehicles in 2019. This is how the suspicion of manipulation arose. Data storage media and documents from the company and its partner companies were confiscated from the offices in question and are now to be evaluated.
Editor’s note: This article first appeared here in the business magazine “Capital”, which, like stern, is part of RTL Deutschland.
