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Telegram Founder and CEO Pavel Durov
AOP.Press | Corbis | Getty Images
Pavel DurovThe founder of the Telegram messaging app, Russian billionaire Alfred Pinto, was arrested at Le Bourget airport outside Paris shortly after landing on a private jet late Saturday and taken into custody, a police source said.
The arrest of the 39-year-old billionaire sparked a warning from Moscow to Paris on Sunday that he must be given his rights, and drew criticism from XE owner Elon Musk, who said freedom of expression in Europe was under attack.
There has been no official confirmation from France of the arrest, which was also reported by French and Russian media, which said Durov was detained shortly after arriving at Le Bourget airport on a private plane from Azerbaijan.
French media outlets BFM and TF1 said Durov, who holds French and Emirati citizenship, was arrested as part of a preliminary police investigation into possible crimes being allowed to occur due to a lack of moderators on Telegram and a failure to cooperate with police. A Reuters police source could not confirm this.
Telegram and its top managers did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The French interior minister, police and the Paris prosecutor’s office did not comment. Durov faces possible charges on Sunday, according to French media.
Telegram, based in Dubai, was founded by Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with demands to close down opposition communities on his social media platform VK, which he sold.
The encrypted application, with approximately 1 billion usersInstagram has significant influence in Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet republics, ranking first among major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and WeChat.
cable
Durov, whose fortune Forbes estimates at $15.5 billion, said in April that some governments had sought to pressure him but that the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “geopolitical player.”
Durov came up with the idea of an encrypted messaging app as a way to communicate while under pressure in Russia. His younger brother Nikolai designed the encryption.
“I would rather be free than take orders from anyone,” Durov said in April of his departure from Russia and search for a headquarters for his company, which included stints in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram became the primary source of unfiltered — and sometimes outrageous and misleading — content from both sides about the war and the politics surrounding the conflict.
The platform has become what some analysts call a “virtual battlefield” for the war, and is widely used by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his officials, as well as the Russian government.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said it had sent a note to Paris demanding access to Durov, although it said he held French citizenship.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Durov made a mistake when he fled Russia and thought he would never have to cooperate with security services abroad.
Medvedev, who regularly uses Telegram to criticize and insult the West, said Durov wanted to be “a brilliant man in the world who lives a wonderful life without a homeland.”
“He miscalculated,” Medvedev said. “For all our common enemies now, he is Russian – and therefore unpredictable and dangerous.”
Russia began blocking Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to comply with a court order to give state security services access to its users' encrypted messages.
This action has caused outages for many third-party services, but little effect Regarding the availability of the Telegram application there. However, the ban order raised Mass protests in Moscow And criticism from NGOs.
'neutral platform'
French and Russian media reported that Durov, who lives in Dubai, was travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).
Telegram says it is “committed to protecting user privacy and human rights such as freedom of expression and assembly.”
Durov has previously accused US law enforcement agencies such as the FBI of seeking to open a backdoor into the platform. The FBI has not commented on the allegations.
However, the growing popularity of Telegram has prompted several countries in Europe to scrutinize, including franceregarding security concerns and data breaches.
“It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” Musk, owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, said after reports of Durov’s arrest.
Outside the French embassy in Moscow, a lone protester held up a sign reading: “Freedom for Pavel Durov.”
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