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The founder and director of the Telegram social network and communication platform Pavel Durov was arrested in France, the local TV station reported TF1 citing your sources. French forces arrested him shortly after his private plane landed at Le Bourget airport near Paris.
The 39-year-old businessman with French and Russian citizenship was accompanied by a bodyguard and one woman. He flew to France from Azerbaijan.
The French station writes that the local authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Durov because they suspect him of involvement in drug trafficking, fraud, abuse of minors and other serious crimes. And that’s because Telegram, as an encrypted app, doesn’t cooperate enough with the authorities when investigating these crimes.
According to TF1, France has already issued an arrest warrant in the past, but it only applied to its territory. “He made a blunder tonight. We don’t know why… Was it just a layover? Anyway, he is in custody,” a source close to the investigation told the television. Durov traveled often in recent years, but mostly avoided European countries.
Already on Sunday, the French authorities should bring official charges against Durov. “Pavel Durov will certainly end up in pre-trial detention, that’s for sure,” a source told the station. According to him, the authorities fear that he could flee France again.
Due to its encryption, the Telegram application is often used by people living in non-democratic regimes, for example it is widespread in Russia or Iran. It can be used to spread anti-regime messages or call for protests. At the same time, it is attractive to criminals.
The application also played a key role during the war in Ukraine. It is through it that Russian and Ukrainian bloggers with good sources inside the armies spread information about the development of the fighting. But also Russian propagandists they claimedthat the military is targeting its weapons with the help of Telegram.
Years of wrangling in Russia
In his native Russia, Durov came into conflict with the regime as early as 2011, when the country was hit by mass demonstrations against rigged parliamentary elections. At that time, Durov, as the head of another social network VKontakte, refused the request to delete the accounts of opposition politicians.
A few years later, when the majority share in VK was already controlled by business groups related to Putin, he refused to provide the Russian security services with the data of Ukrainian rebels against then-President Viktor Yanukovych or to block the page of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
This was followed by his dismissal from the management position in the company and his departure from Russia. While there, he and his brother developed Telegram, which eventually succeeded on a global scale. This time, Pavel Durov was cautious and did not let Russian investors into the company. He chose the headquarters for the company in Dubai.
However, Durov did not avoid problems with the Kremlin even abroad.
Telegram and its conflicts in Russia
The application Telegram has a more significant role during the war in Ukraine than, for example, Facebook. Its founder, Pavel Durov, had to resist pressure from Moscow several times.
In 2018, one of the Moscow District Courts decided about blocking access to Telegram on the territory of Russia due to the fact that he did not hand over the encryption keys to the Russian security forces. It was a failure to comply with a law, officially aimed at terrorists, that required all Internet companies operating in Russia to provide the authorities with the information needed to decode their users’ messages.
However, the Russian authorities’ efforts to block the application ran into technical problems. Telegram remained available for Russian users. After less than two years, Moscow has been blocked she retreatedwhen the company externally pledged to fight “terrorism and extremism”. Durov always categorically denied that he would make any further concessions to the Kremlin.