The ACT government has told Beam to take its scooters off the streets of Canberra by the end of next week. The company has until the end of this week to deactivate them - so its service ends on Sunday.
The decision to bar the company follows its admission that it had actually installed 250 more scooters in Canberra than the 950 it had licenses for - with the result that it paid less in fees than it should have.
The matter may be referred to the police.
"Analysis has found that since July 2023 there was an average of about 250 additional scooters deployed," an ACT government spokesperson said.
"We are in discussions with other jurisdictions and the matter might be referred to other regulatory agencies dependent on legal advice."
Canberra's "get-out-of-town" order follows a similar decision in Brisbane and in Auckland.
"Last month staff at Transport Canberra and City Services received information alleging Beam was acting outside of their permit conditions to operate by manipulating data," the deputy director of Transport Canberra, Ben McHugh, said.
"This means all Beam's e-scooters in Canberra will need to be deactivated by midnight on Sunday, September 8, 2024. All their e-scooters will need to be removed from public areas by 4pm Friday, September 13, 2024," a government statement said.
The ACT government has investigated the number of Beam scooters actually in Canberra streets and found that they didn't marry up with the number of permits. Beam pays the ACT government a fee for each scooter - so understating the number of scooters would mean less money to the ACT government than the actual number of scooters merited.
"We believe Beam has failed to meet the expectations of the Canberra community under their permit to operate and therefore we will not be renewing their permit to operate," Mr McHugh said.
Scooters for the rival company, Neuron, would still be available.
Beam said earlier that there had been no intention to defraud the taxpayer by understating the number of its scooters.
"We emphatically reject any suggestion that this was a scheme to deprive councils of revenue," Beam's chief executive Alan Jiang said in an earlier statement.
It was, he said, a mistake and the company was "deeply apologetic".
"We understand the importance of our social licence in our key markets and recognise that we need to do better in the future to meet the high standards our partners set for us," Mr Jiang said.
The council in New Zealand's biggest city had already cancelled the licence for Beam to operate e-scooters there. It had also referred the matter to the police as an allegation of fraud.
Beam's rival, Neuron, called Beam's behaviour "reprehensible": "This kind of deception is a terrible breach of trust and ethics and is totally reprehensible; it does not in any way reflect how the wider industry operates," Neuron said.
