If you ask Oliver Mackprang (36) where it is most difficult for the car sharing provider Miles Mobility to do business, you will get one answer: Berlin. Mackprang has been at loggerheads with the capital, Miles’ home, for years. The native Canadian repeatedly railed against what he saw as the unfair conditions that Berlin politicians imposed on car sharing providers. “The cost burden in Berlin is incomparably high,” complained Mackprang in an “Daily Mirror
“-Guest post.
He is particularly upset about the parking regulations. “A Miles vehicle pays between 150 and 200 euros in parking fees per month. This adds up to over ten million euros per year across the entire fleet,” calculated the Miles boss in January. This means that Miles’ 5,000 vehicles alone would generate around a quarter of all Berlin’s parking revenue per year. “Mind you, with over 1.2 million registered cars in this city.”
Since this Wednesday, the feud between the mobility provider and the capital has reached a spectacular climax. The Berlin public prosecutor’s office accuses Mackprang and his managing director colleague Eyvindur Kristjansson (43) of embezzling parking fees on a large scale since 2019. A sum of 25 to 30 million euros is in question; the Berlin police suspect “gang and commercial fraud and computer fraud”.
Officials from the Berlin State Criminal Police Office searched Miles’ offices and the private apartments of the managing directors. Investigators also went to North Rhine-Westphalia and Vienna to visit companies that worked with Miles. According to “Tagesspiegel”, one is the telematics service provider Invers. But only Mackprang and Kristjansson are being investigated.
Suspicion since 2019
In Berlin, car sharing providers usually commission companies to automatically determine and pay parking fees using telemetry data and a cell phone parking system. In the case of Miles, employees of the public order offices and the police fines office had noticed “significant deviations in the permissibility of paying parking fees” and “an exceptionally high number of parking fee violations” by Miles vehicles since 2019, the investigators said. This led to the suspicion that Miles may have manipulated the telemetry data used in order to avoid fees.
Mackprang and Kristjansson started their jobs at Miles in 2019, moving from Volkswagen’s mobility subsidiary Moia to the car sharing provider. Miles did not comment on the allegations, citing ongoing investigations and saying they are cooperating with the authorities.
The allegations hit Miles, one of the few providers who in the difficult car sharing business
had recently produced many positive headlines. Mackprang and Co. caused a particular stir in November 2022 with the takeover of the VW subsidiary Weshare. Market experts consider Miles to be particularly cost-effective. The Miles investors include well-known names such as internet entrepreneur Lukasz Gadowski (46) and the Hamburg real estate and energy professional Albert Büll (85)
.
Miles wanted to dispel doubts about the company’s solidity with an annual report that was certified for the first time. Despite being announced in the spring, this took many months to arrive. Pwc auditors have now approved the paper.
Accordingly, Miles made a loss of 2 million euros in 2022 with sales of 90.7 million euros. Unadjusted, i.e. before taxes and without costs for special items such as consulting fees, there was a slim profit of 400,000 euros. At the end of 2022, Miles had 1,262 registered customers. For 2023, Miles expects sales of 190 to 210 million euros and wants to achieve an adjusted annual profit of up to 5 million euros for the first time.
“Miles is a Berlin success story,” Mackprang praised himself and his colleagues in his guest article from January. After Wednesday’s events, that analysis is more questionable than ever.