The Russian-French entrepreneur, founder and CEO of the privacy-focused messaging app Telegram, was arrested on Saturday night at Bourget airport outside Paris.
Pavel Durov is accused of not doing enough to prevent criminals from using his platform and risks being held personally liable for crimes committed by others on Telegram.
The encrypted service currently has nearly a billion users and is particularly popular in Eastern Europe. After Facebook, Youtube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat, Telegram is now considered the largest social media platform, writes Reuters.
According to French police sources, Durov was arrested as part of an investigation led by Ofmin, the part of the French justice system that works against the exploitation, violence and abuse of young people, and Telegram is alleged to facilitate the activities of criminals in various ways – including due to a lack of moderation and an unwillingness to cooperate with authorities, it is claimed.
“For many years, it has been the number one platform for criminal activity”, said a French investigator.
Durov has reportedly been the subject of an arrest warrant in France, which is why he has not visited the country for a long time, and is suspected of involvement in fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, promoting terrorism and organized crime, among other things.
“Wants to be free”
Durov is not accused of committing any of the above crimes himself, but rather of crimes that allegedly took place on his platform, but for which he is held responsible in his capacity as CEO/founder, and for which he is accused of not doing enough to prevent. However, if convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison, according to media reports.
In 2014, Durov left Russia for Dubai, where Telegram was launched. One reason he decided to move was that he did not want to comply with the Russian government’s demand to shut down opposition groups on the media platform Vkontakte, which he owned at the time but later sold.
– I would rather be free than to take orders from anyone, he explained in an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this spring.
Neither Telegram nor French authorities have commented on the arrest. However, the Russian Foreign Ministry is calling on Paris to clarify the situation and urging human rights organizations to demand Durov’s release. Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are two notable figures who have publicly called for the Telegram founder’s release.
#FreePavel
pic.twitter.com/B7AcJWswMs— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2024
France just arrested Pavel Durov, founder & CEO of the encrypted, uncensored Telegram platform. The need to protect free speech has never been more urgent.
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 25, 2024
In the interview with Tucker Carlson, Durov explained how the FBI had previously worked to infiltrate Telegram in various ways, including by secretly trying to “buy” one of the site’s engineers, who would be secretly tasked with modifying Telegram’s code and allowing the FBI to create a “backdoor” so they could spy on the app’s users.
The Owner of Telegram, Pavel Durov has been arrested…
The FBI Tried to Secretly Infiltrate Telegram to Give Themselves “Backdoor Access” to Users Private Data
• Durov’s last visit to the US, he brought an engineer….
• The FBI secretly tried to hire his engineer behind the… https://t.co/lQdb9Th38C pic.twitter.com/kytIVscJEH
— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) August 24, 2024
