Durov travelled aboard his private jet, TF1 reported on its website, adding that an arrest warrant had been issued against him in France as part of preliminary police investigations.
Both TF1 and BFM said the investigation focused on the lack of moderators on Telegram and that police believed this situation allowed criminal activity on the messaging app to continue unhindered.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The French Interior Ministry and police did not comment.
Durov, a native of Russia, founded Telegram with his brother in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on his social media platform VKontakte. He then sold the platform.
“I would rather be free than take orders from anyone,” Durov told US journalist Tucker Carlson in April about his departure from Russia and the search for a location for his company, which included stops in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has become the main source of unfiltered – and sometimes graphic and misleading – content from both sides about the war and the politics surrounding the conflict.
Some analysts call the platform a “virtual battlefield” of war, used extensively by both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his officials, as well as the Russian government.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the embassy in Paris was investigating the situation surrounding Durov and called on Western non-governmental organizations to demand his release.
Russia began blocking Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to comply with a court order giving state security services access to its users’ encrypted messages.
“NEUTRAL PLATFORM”
TF1 reported that Durov, who lives in Dubai, arrived from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 8 p.m. (6 p.m. GMT).
Durov, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, said some governments have tried to put pressure on him, but the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics.”
Russia’s representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and several other Russian politicians were quick on Sunday to accuse France of behaving like a dictatorship, the same criticism Moscow faced when it made demands on Durov in 2014 and tried to ban Telegram in 2018.
“Some naive people still do not understand that it is not safe for them to visit countries that are moving towards more totalitarian societies if they play a more or less visible role in the international information space,” Ulyanov wrote on X.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, said after reports of Durov’s imprisonment: “It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re going to be executed for liking a meme.”
Several Russian bloggers called for protests in front of French embassies around the world on Sunday afternoon.
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Reporting by Ingrid Melander and Gilles Guillaume in Paris, Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Camille Raynaud in Toronto; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by David Gregorio and Lincoln Feast.
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.