Pavel Durov, the Russian-French billionaire founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at Bourget airport exterior Paris on Saturday night (24 August), TF1 TV and BFM TV stated, citing unnamed sources.
Durov was travelling aboard his personal jet, TF1 stated on its web site, including he had been focused by an arrest warrant in France as a part of a preliminary police investigation.
TF1 and BFM each stated the investigation was centered on an absence of moderators on Telegram, and that police thought-about that this example allowed felony exercise to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
The encrypted Telegram, with shut to 1 billion customers, is especially influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the previous Soviet Union. It’s ranked as one of many main social media platforms after Fb, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.
Telegram didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark. The French Inside Ministry and police had no remark.
Russian-born Durov based Telegram together with his brother in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to adjust to authorities calls for to close down opposition communities on his VKontakte social media platform, which he offered.
“I might reasonably be free than to take orders from anybody,” Durov advised US journalist Tucker Carlson in April about his exit from Russia and seek for a house for his firm which included stints in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has turn out to be the principle supply of unfiltered – and typically graphic and deceptive – content material from each side in regards to the conflict and the politics surrounding the battle.
The platform has turn out to be what some analysts name ‘a digital battlefield’ for the conflict, used closely by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his officers, in addition to the Russian authorities.
Telegram – which permits customers to evade official scrutiny – has additionally turn out to be one of many few locations the place Russians can entry impartial information in regards to the conflict after the Kremlin elevated curbs on impartial media following its invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian overseas ministry stated its embassy in Paris was clarifying the state of affairs round Durov and known as on Western non-governmental organisations to demand his launch.
Russia started blocking Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to adjust to a court docket order to grant state safety providers entry to its customers’ encrypted messages.
The motion interrupted many third-party providers, however had little impact on the supply of Telegram there. The ban order, nonetheless, sparked mass protests in Moscow and criticism from NGOs.
‘Impartial platform’
TF1 stated Dubai-based Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at round 8.00 p.m. (1800 GMT).
Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, stated some governments had sought to stress him however the app ought to stay a “impartial platform” and never a “participant in geopolitics”.
Telegram’s rising recognition, nonetheless, has prompted scrutiny from a number of international locations in Europe, together with France, on safety and knowledge breach issues.
Russia’s consultant to worldwide organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and several other different Russian politicians had been fast on Sunday to accuse France of appearing as a dictatorship – the identical criticism that Moscow confronted when placing calls for on Durov in 2014 and making an attempt to ban Telegram in 2018.
“Some naive individuals nonetheless don’t perceive that in the event that they play kind of seen function in worldwide data area it isn’t secure for them to go to international locations which transfer in the direction of far more totalitarian societies,” Ulyanov wrote on X.
Elon Musk, billionaire proprietor of X, the social media platform previously generally known as Twitter, stated after reviews of Durov’s detention: “It’s 2030 in Europe and also you’re being executed for liking a meme.”
A number of Russian bloggers known as for protests at French embassies all through the world at midday on Sunday.
