Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France under a warrant related to the app.
The founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov was arrested by French authorities at Le Bourget Airport, north of Paris. He was detained after arriving in his private area under a warrant in relation to the Telegram app. The specific reason for the arrest has not been disclosed yet.
Pavel Durov is the 39-year-old founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram, which is one of the top five most downloaded apps in the world and has over 950 million active users, according to its official website.
Telegram was founded by Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai Durov in 2013. Pavel Durov ensures financial and ideological support whereas Nikolai Durov provides technological support.
According to Forbes magazine, Pavel Durov is known as Russia‘s Zuckerberg as he had created Vkontakte, which is known as Russia’s biggest social network, at the age of 22 and has an estimated fortune of $15.5 billion.
Pavel Durov became a French citizen in August 2021. He moved himself and Telegram to Dubai in 2017, and according to French media he has also received United Arab Emirates citizenship. He is also a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis, a dual-island nation in the Caribbean, according to media reports.
Pavel Durov had to leave Russia after he did not reportedly cooperate with the Russian secret service to provide encrypted data of his social network users, according to Forbes magazine.
In 2018, Russia started blocking Telegram after it did not comply with a court order to give security services access to its users’ encrypted messages. This led to mass protests in Moscow and criticism from NGOs, according to a report by Reuters.
The report also quoted an excerpt from an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson where Durov spoke about his exit from Russia. “I would rather be free than to take orders from anyone,” he said.
News agency AFP also stated another excerpt from the same interview where Durov mentioned that he got the idea to start an encrypted messaging app after coming under pressure from the Russian government when working at VK. He said that he planned to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before settling in Dubai. He appreciated Dubai for its business environment and “neutrality”.
People “love the independence. They also love the privacy, the freedom, (there are) a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram,” Durov said.
In 2018, Pavel and Nikolai, raised $1.7 billion from investors to create a blockchain system called TON, which was shut down after the US Securities and Exchange Commission banned it in violation of federal securities laws, according to reports.
According to Forbes, Telegram has become a critical source of information, and plenty of disinformation during the Russia-Ukraine war.
Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov is expected to appear in court Sunday after being arrested by French police at an airport near Paris for alleged offences related to his popular messaging app, sources told AFP.
The Franco-Russian billionaire, 39, was detained at Le Bourget airport north of the French capital on Saturday evening, one of the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Durov had arrived from Baku, in Azerbaijan, another source close to the case said.
France’s OFMIN, an office tasked with preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov in a preliminary investigation into alleged offences including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime and promotion of terrorism, one of the sources said.
Durov is accused of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform.
“Enough of Telegram’s impunity,” said one of the investigators, adding they were surprised Durov came to Paris knowing he was a wanted man.
Platform of App’privacy’
The encrypted messaging app, based in Dubai, has positioned itself as an alternative to US-owned platforms, which have been criticised for their commercial exploitation of users’ personal data.
Telegram has committed to never disclosing any information about its users.
In a rare interview given to right-wing talk show host Tucker Carlson in April, Durov said he got the idea to launch an encrypted messaging app after coming under pressure from the Russian government when working at VK, a social network he created before selling it and leaving Russia in 2014.
He said he then tried to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before choosing Dubai, which he praised for its business environment and “neutrality”.
People “love the independence. They also love the privacy, the freedom, (there are) a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram,” Durov told Carlson.
He said at the time that the platform had more than 900 million active users.
By basing itself in the United Arab Emirates, Telegram has been able to shield itself from moderation laws at a time when Western countries are pressuring large platforms to remove illegal content.
Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, which has led to accusations that it makes it easier for false information to spread virally, as well as for users to disseminate neo-Nazi, paedophilic, conspiratorial and terrorist content.