After being detained at a Paris airport on suspicion of charges connected to his well-known messaging service, billionaire Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov is scheduled to appear in court on Sunday, according to sources who spoke to AFP.
Following the 39-year-old Franco-Russian billionaire’s arrest at Le Bourget airport on Saturday night, Russia has accused France of “refusing to cooperate.”
A person with knowledge of the situation indicated that Durov had travelled from Baku, Azerbaijan.
According to a source, Durov was the subject of an arrest warrant issued by France’s OFMIN, an organisation entrusted with preventing violence against minors, as part of a preliminary probe into allegations of fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime, and terrorism promotion.
Durov is charged with not doing enough to stop illegal activity on his platform.
One investigator exclaimed, “Enough of Telegram’s impunity,” and was shocked to learn that Durov had flown to Paris while aware that he was wanted.
“Unwilling to participate”
According to Russian officials, they requested access to Durov but received no answer from France.
“We urged that his rights be upheld and that he be provided access to consular services, and we promptly asked the French authorities to explain the circumstances behind this imprisonment. Russia’s embassy in Paris stated in a statement that was carried by the news agency Ria Novosti that “the French side is refusing to cooperate on this question up to this point.”
Entrepreneur and X social media platform owner Elon Musk wrote, “Liberte Liberte! Liberte?” in French beside the hashtag #FreePavel. Freedom, Freedom, Freedom?
On X, former US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated that “it has never been more urgent to protect free speech.”
The Dubai-based encrypted messaging service has positioned itself as a rival to US-owned platforms that have come under fire for abusing user data for profit.
Telegram has pledged never to share any user information.
In an uncommon interview, Durov told Tucker Carlson, presenter of the right-wing talk program, in April that he was under pressure from the Russian government to release an encrypted messaging app while he was employed at VK, the social network he founded before selling it and departing the country in 2014.
After that, he claimed to have attempted to live in Berlin, London, Singapore, and San Francisco before deciding on Dubai, which he commended for its “neutrality” and business-friendly atmosphere.
Individuals “love the freedom.” Durov informed Carlson, “They also love the freedom and privacy—there are a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram.”
At the time, he claimed that there were over 900 million active users on the network.
At a time when Western nations are forcing major platforms to remove unlawful information, Telegram has insulated itself from moderation rules by establishing its headquarters in the United Arab Emirates.
Telegram permits groups to have up to 200,000 members, which has given rise to claims that it facilitates the viral spread of false information and the dissemination of terrorist, neo-Nazi, paedophilic, and conspiratorial content by users.
In 2019, rival messaging app WhatsApp imposed global restrictions on message forwarding following allegations that it had helped propagate false information in India that resulted in lynchings.