French police arrested Pavel Durov, the founder and head of the Telegram communication platform, at the Paris airport on Saturday evening. This was reported by TF1 TV, citing an unnamed source. A source close to the investigation confirmed the information to AFP. The 39-year-old billionaire is a citizen of Russia and France, he arrived on his private plane from Azerbaijan.
According to TF1, French authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Durov in connection with insufficient moderation of content on Telegram. The tools offered by Durov’s platform make him complicit in drug trafficking, pedophile crimes and fraud, according to French law enforcement authorities.
The Reuters agency writes that Telegram has not yet commented on the TF1 report. Neither the French police nor the Ministry of the Interior have yet commented on Durov’s arrest.
The Russian Embassy in Moscow has taken the necessary steps to clarify the situation surrounding Pavel Durov, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported according to the TASS agency. It added, however, that the businessman’s representatives did not contact the embassy.
Durov, a native of St. Petersburg, left Russia in 2014 after refusing to accede to demands to shut down opposition groups on the social network VKontakte, which he also founded and later sold. Forbes magazine estimates the value of his property at 15.5 billion dollars (346.7 billion crowns).
Regarding the Telegram platform, Durov says that some governments are trying to pressure it to remain “neutral” and not be a “player in geopolitics”. Telegram, which is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union, currently has 900 million active users, Reuters writes.
After the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Telegram became the main source of information that the opposing sides publish about the development of the conflict. Reuters notes that content on Telegram channels is sometimes misleading and brutal.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi and his associates use the platform as one of the main communication tools. The Kremlin, the Russian government or Russian war bloggers also spread their information through it. For Russians, it is one of the few places where they can get news about the two-and-a-half-year-long war.
Video: Torture, turnkey kidnapping, drugs, counterfeits. We map the criminal underworld of the Czech Telegram
Torture, kidnapping, drugs, forgeries. We map the criminal underworld of the Czech Telegram | Video: Aktuálně.cz
