Who is Eric Léandri, the European superhero of technology ended up spying for third parties

Why does the tech industry have to be a California (or Asia or Israel) preserve? he wondered Eric Leandri when in 2011 together with Jean-Manuel Rozan and Patrick Constant, he founded Qwant, the search engine that offered itself as an alternative to Google. No user profiling and zero filtering bubbles in the presentation of search results, the two battle horses of Léandri and Rozan who have always fought, even with articles and television appearances, a campaign against Silicon Valley and its dark side, the data sale. The enthusiasm for a “good” alternative made in the EU with French traction it was very high. The project was co-financed by the European Investment Bank and received applause from the antitrust, Emmanuel Macron, when he was still an advisor to President Hollande, and also from Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who said in 2018: “Qwant is the answer to all the skeptics who think that France and Europe cannot be rivals of the American internet giants”.

Relations with the Elysium have always been excellent. So much so that Rozan has even written a rather celebratory book on Macron, which she has always tried to invest in innovation. Son of the founder of a luxury hotel in Guadalupe, Rozan was the entrepreneurial part of the trio, business school in America and decades of finance between Paris and Wall Street, he had also tried to export the Parisian restaurant La Coupole to New York, which closed shortly after more than a year. Constant, more reserved, brought his IT knowledge to search engines. Léandri, on the other hand, was the cyber security expert, self-made-man engineer who had started out selling computers in Corsica. They were united by the desire to remove the dominance from Google, as well as to defend the privacy of citizens and bring glory to France. Even today, Qwant’s slogan is: “The search engine that knows nothing about you, and that changes everything.”

Qwant risked becoming the official search engine of the French public administration, then financial woes arose over allegations that the content sought on the site came from other engines, such as Bing. Léandri in 2020 left the leadership, with Qwant on the verge of bankruptcy. This year the company was saved by the Chinese Huaweii. But Léandri got up riding the tech wave, also thanks to the contacts created between establishment and corporations in the Qwant years, founding alternativelyspecialized in cybersecurity. The former privacy crusader has changed sides.

A few days ago an investigation by Politico has revealed that Altrnativ, paid by some large French companies, has been busy spying on employees and competitors. Léandri’s new job would be to obtain private information and resell it. Clients identified by Politico include luxury giant LVHM, oil and mayonnaise maker Leisure, aviation firm Dassault Aviation and maritime industrial group Naval Group. According to the investigation, Naval Group tried to analyze the level of loyalty of its employees in both France and Australia after sensitive phone calls about a large sale were leaked. The company allegedly shared private information on around 30 employees with Altrnativ, as well as prompting an investigation into some personalities who may have played a role in the sale of nuclear submarines to Australia, such as a senator and a CEO of a systems firm defence. In the end, the diplomatic incident risked and the Australians preferred to buy from the Americans rather than from the French. Instead, Léandri’s job for Dassault Aviation would have been to check the background of one employee and two prospective employees, all three of whom were French of North African origin, using private information to see if they had any links to foreign intelligence services. But what he would have discovered Politico does not stop at online investigative operations, with a paranoid tenor and often illegal according to national and European directives on France. Altrnativ also allegedly offered its services to several African governments to help them use cyber security on population control. We talk about Benin, Chad, Cameroon, Comoros, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. Presentations with company logos have been found offering packages with hardware and malware that can remotely control other people’s cell phones, tools that can monitor and intercept phone calls, as well as the ability to monitor the Internet on a large scale. These presentations were allegedly made in collaboration with a French-Canadian arms dealer originally from Cameroon. There would also be presentations to the governments of Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire with packages that include, in addition to equipment, intelligence training courses.

African countries, mostly dictatorships, which were part of the French empire, are entering the world of cyber security, or cyber-weapon, new weapons of control, oppression or aggression. Tanks and Kalashnikovs and drones continue to be central, as seen today in Ukraine, but there are not a few analysts who speak of a future of cyber-conflicts.

Speaking of Africa Léandri said last year: “The technologies that we have in Europe today will have a real impact that could change the way we participate in the growth of a continent which, it must be remembered, was not connected to anything and which now it’s hyper-connected.” Léandri allegedly used his old acquaintances to get in touch with former diplomats stationed in Africa, hiring them within Altrnativ, such as Gérard Errera, former NATO ambassador now Blackstone Group, or François-Xavier Hauet, former deputy director of information systems at the Elysée. Léandri does not deny his work on the continent, but said his advice is only part of larger packages not managed by him. He continues to say that his battle is that of technological sovereignty. He says that “the only way to protect Europeans is to use tools developed by Europeans”.