Telegram messaging app CEO Durov arrested in France – Technology

PARIS (Reuters) – Pavel Durov, the Russian-French billionaire who founded and chief executive of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested on Saturday evening at Bourget airport near Paris, television stations TF1 TV and BFM TV reported, citing unnamed sources.

Durov was traveling on a private jet, TF1 reported on its website, adding that a warrant for his arrest had been issued in France as part of a preliminary police investigation.

Both TF1 and BFM said the investigation focused on the lack of moderators at Telegram and police believed the situation allowed for unrestricted criminal activity on the messaging app.

Encrypted Telegram, with nearly a billion users, is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet republics. It is ranked as one of the main social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and WeChat.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. The French Interior Ministry and police did not comment on the matter. Durov, who was born in Russia, founded Telegram with his brother in 2013.

He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to close opposition communities on his social media platform VKontakte, which he sold.

“I’d rather be free than take orders from anyone,” Durov told American journalist Tucker Carlson in April about his departure from Russia and search for a headquarters for his company, which included stints in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco.

After Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram became a major source of unfiltered — and at times graphic and misleading — bipartisan content about the war and the politics surrounding the conflict.

The platform has become, as some analysts say, a “virtual battlefield” of war, intensively used by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his officials, as well as by the Russian government.

Telegram – which allows users to avoid official scrutiny – has also become one of the few places where Russians can access independent news about the war after the Kremlin tightened restrictions on independent media following the invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the embassy in Paris was investigating the situation around Durov and appealed to Western non-governmental organizations to demand his release.

Russia began blocking Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to comply with a court order that required state security services to access users’ encrypted messages.

The move disrupted many third-party services but had little impact on Telegram’s availability. However, the ban sparked mass protests in Moscow and criticism from non-governmental organizations.

‘NEUTRAL PLATFORM’

TF1 reported that Durov, who lives in Dubai, was travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 8pm (1800 GMT).
Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, said some governments had tried to pressure him but the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics.”

However, Telegram’s growing popularity has caused many countries in Europe, including France, to take notice of it due to concerns about security and data breaches.

Russia’s representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and several other Russian politicians were quick to accuse France of dictatorial behavior on Sunday — the same criticism Moscow faced when it made demands against Durov in 2014 and when it tried to block the Telegram app in 2018.

“Some naive people still do not understand that if they play a more or less visible role in the international information space, it is not safe for them to visit countries that are moving towards much more totalitarian societies,” Ulyanov wrote on the X portal.

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, said after reports of Durov’s detention: “It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme.”

Several Russian bloggers called for protests to be held outside French embassies around the world at noon on Sunday.