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InvestigationAlthough it presents itself as a Spanish company, Passwork was actually developed in Russia and operates with a license from Russia's FSB domestic intelligence agency. The situation raises major security questions for its customers, including several French companies.
On the surface, it is a "European organization based in Spain, serving thousands of customers across the EU" and claims to be "independent, transparent and proudly bootstrapped." On its website, Passwork, which sells password management software for businesses, leans heavily on the "made in Europe" card to attract new customers, at a time when many companies are questioning their reliance on American technology.
Behind the scenes, Passwork also has a sister company in Russia that holds contracts with sanctioned firms and operates with a license from the FSB, Russia's domestic intelligence service and successor to the KGB. The leaders of Passwork SL, the European entity, insist they have virtually no ties to the Russian company. However, an investigation coordinated by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project with a consortium of news organizations, including Le Monde, has found that the two entities are, in reality, closely linked. This raises significant security concerns for their European clients.
Passwork was created by Ilya Garakh and Andrei Pyankov, two Russian entrepreneurs from the digital marketing sector, in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk in the mid-2010s. In its early days, the company offered a cloud service for storing user passwords, but it later developed an "on-premise" version, meaning businesses could install it on their own servers. In theory, such an option is highly secure.
Poutine's ear
In 2017, the company's development accelerated when its two founders met Finnish investor Pekka Viljakainen. The millionaire was well acquainted with Russia's start-up scene, regularly attending the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum and serving as an adviser to Skolkovo, Moscow's main tech incubator. At the time, he also claimed to have the ear of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev. In 2016, Putin awarded the Finnish investor the Medal of Friendship. Viljakainen frequently spoke out against the European Union's sanctions on Russia following the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
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