Photo: Getty Images via Agence France-Presse The French justice system accuses Pavel Durov of not taking action against the criminal uses of his encrypted messaging service Telegram by his subscribers, in particular by a lack of moderation and collaboration with investigators.
Sylvie Maligorne – Agence France-Presse in Paris
Published at 10:12
- Europe
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is due to appear in court on Sunday, the day after he was arrested at a Paris airport, after a search warrant was issued against him by French investigators for various violations of his encrypted messaging service.
Accompanied by his bodyguard and assistant who follow him around the clock, the 39-year-old Franco-Russian billionaire was arrested on Saturday evening at the Bourget airport terminal, north of Paris, a source close to the case told AFP.
The Telegram founder was coming from Baku (Azerbaijan) and was due to spend at least the evening in Paris, where he had planned to have dinner, a source close to the investigation added.
He will be presented to the courts in Paris on Sunday, according to a source close to the case.
Repeatedly contacted by AFP, the Paris prosecutor's office refused on Sunday to provide any information “as it stands, as this is a procedure followed during the investigation.”
The office responsible for combating violence against minors (OFMIN) had issued a search warrant against Pavel Durov as the coordinating department of a preliminary investigation into offences ranging from fraud to drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime, and the glorification of terrorism and fraud, explained a source close to the case.
Since then, on an unspecified date, a judicial investigation has been opened by the cyber division (J3) of JUNALCO (national jurisdiction for the fight against organized crime), according to another source close to the case. The investigations have been entrusted, the same source added, to the National Cyber Unit (UNC) of the national gendarmerie and to ONAF, the national anti-fraud office dependent on customs.
The justice system accuses Pavel Durov of not taking action against the criminal uses of his messaging by his subscribers, in particular through a lack of moderation and collaboration with investigators.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000“Enough of Telegram's impunity,” said one of the investigators, surprised that the billionaire, knowing that he was wanted in France, had decided to come to Paris anyway. “Perhaps because of a feeling of impunity,” said one of the sources close to the case.
The online messaging service launched in 2013 by Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai, on which communications can be encrypted from end to end and whose head office is in Dubai, has positioned itself against the grain of American platforms, criticized for their commercial exploitation of personal data.
Telegram has notably committed to never revealing information about its users.
Numerous international reactions
The arrest of Pavel Durov has sparked numerous international reactions. “#FreePavel“, the platform's boss, Elon Musk, posted on X (ex-Twitter), before posting a new message in French saying “Freedom. Freedom! Freedom ?”.
Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently rallied to Donald Trump, stated on X that “the need to protect freedom of expression has never been more urgent.”
In Russia, where Telegram is one of the most widely used social networks with channels that can have several hundred thousand subscribers, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated that “the Russian embassy in Paris immediately got to work, as is customary” in the event of detentions of Russian citizens abroad.
She also recalled that many international NGOs had condemned a Russian court’s decision in 2018 to block Telegram, a decision that was never fully implemented. “Do you think that this time they will appeal and demand Durov's release, or will they keep quiet ?,” she asked on her Telegram page.
Privacy advocate Pavel Durov said in a rare video interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in April that he came up with the idea of launching an encrypted messaging service after being pressured by Russian authorities at the time of VK, a social network he created in his home country before selling it and leaving Russia in 2014.
He said he then tried to set up in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before settling on Dubai, which he praised for its business environment and “neutrality.”
“I think we are doing a good job with Telegram, with 900 million users that will probably exceed 1 billion monthly active users within a year,” he said.
In the Gulf emirate, Telegram has protected itself from state moderation rules, at a time when the European Union and the United States are putting pressure on major platforms to remove illegal content.
With its discussion groups that can accommodate up to 200,000 people, the messaging service is sometimes accused of increasing the viral potential of false information and the proliferation of hateful, neo-Nazi, pedophile, conspiracy or terrorist content.