Pavel Durov, the billionaire founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram, was arrested at Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, according to two unidentified police sources cited by TF1 TV and BFM TV.
TF1 and BFM were informed that the investigation focused on Telegram’s lack of moderation and that the police were considering whether to continue to allow this state of affairs to continue so that unhindered activities could be carried out on the messaging app.
Telegram did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. The French Interior Ministry and police had no immediate comment. Russia, which had previously tried to ban Telegram, said it had begun taking measures to “clarify” Durov’s situation.
What is known about Durov and Telegram
Pavel Durov, 39, is a Russian-born founder and owner of the messaging app Telegram. This free messaging app platform competes in the market with other social media platforms such as Facebook’s WhatsApp or Instagram, TikTok and WeChat. It aims to exceed the one billion active monthly users mark within a year.
Telegram is highly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet republics. It has become a major source of information about Russia’s war against Ukraine and is used extensively by both Moscow and Kyiv. Some analysts call the app a “virtual battlefield” for the war.
Pavel Durov, whose fortune is $15.5 billion according to Forbes, left Russia in 2014 after refusing to give in to government pressure to close opposition communities on his social media platform VKontakte and then sell them.
He has been a French citizen since August 2021. In 2017, he moved to Dubai with Telegram and, according to French media reports, has also been a citizen of the United Arab Emirates since then. According to media reports, he is also a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis, an island nation in the Caribbean.
In April 2018, Russia began blocking the popular messaging app Telegram because it refused to share the keys to its users’ messages with state security services. This measure was relatively ineffective in terms of impacting Telegram’s availability in the country, but sparked mass protests in Moscow and drew criticism from NGOs.
Given Telegram’s growing popularity, European countries like France began investigating Telegram for security issues and privacy violations. In early May, it was reported that EU technology regulators had contacted Telegram, violating one of its key usage criteria, which could lead to further, broader responsibilities under the historic EU Online Content Law.
In April, Durov confided to US journalist Tucker Carlson: “I would rather be free than take orders from anyone” – thus justifying his escape from Russia and the search for a base for his company, which took him and Telegram through Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco.
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