Telegram’s Pavel Durov Speaks Out Against French Charges

Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire founder and owner of the Telegram messaging app, has spoken out after his arrest in France.

The Associated Press reported Durov promising to step up efforts to fight alleged criminality on the messaging app, in his first public comments via a post on Telegram.

Last month 39 year-old Durov had been detained and placed in police custody at Le Bourget airport outside Paris, shortly after he landed on a private jet from Azerbaijan.

Durov’s arrest, charges

There had been media speculation that Durov’s visit to Azerbaijan was so he could meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin (who was visiting the same city at the same time), although Russian officials have denied the two had met.

At the time of his arrest sources indicated Durov had been arrested amid a police investigation into him allegedly allowing a wide range of crimes due to a lack of content moderators on Telegram and a lack of co-operation with police.

But it later emerged that the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office had issued a warrant for Durov’s arrest over an investigation opened on 8 July into organised crime, drug trafficking, fraud, and the distribution of pornographic images of minors on the platform.

It is also alleged that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.

It was then confirmed that Durov had been preliminary charged by the French judiciary for allegedly allowing criminal activity on the messaging app.

After four days of questioning, Durov was freed from jail on a €5m (£4.2m or $5.5m) bail, with other restrictions including not leaving France, and reporting to a police station twice a week.

Durov’s response

Now in his first public comments on the matter, made in a Telegram post late Thursday, Durov reportedly defended himself against the French judicial investigation, suggesting that he shouldn’t have been targeted personally.

“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach,” the post reportedly stated. “Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”

While insisting that Telegram is not “some sort of anarchic paradise,” Durov was quoted by AP as saying that surging numbers of Telegram users “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”

“That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon,” he said.

In his post, Durov was quoted by AP as saying that while in police detention, “I was told I may be personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities didn’t receive responses from Telegram.”

“This was surprising for several reasons,” he reportedly stated.

He said Telegram has an official representative in the European Union who replies to EU requests, with a public email address.

In his post, Durov also reportedly said “French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance.” He said he also had previously worked with them to “establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France.”

“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” he said.

Telegram history

Dubai-based Telegram is widely used in countries across the former Soviet Union and Middle East, and is said to be the most popular instant messaging application in parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Telegram was founded in 2013 by Nikolai and Pavel Durov and has been growing steadily since then. It is said to have close to 1 billion users.

Pavel Durov fully owns Telegram and he is estimated by Forbes to have a fortune of $15.5 billion.

Pavel Durov had left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.

Russian authorities had previously accused Telegram of enabling terrorists to communicate in secret through the encrypted messaging and had blamed the app for concealing the messages of the suicide bomber who killed 15 people in St Petersburg in April 2017.

The app was also used by Islamic State for propaganda purposes in the past, especially by those based in Russia, but the company made efforts to clamp down on these terrorist accounts.

However Telegram has consistently refused to comply with demands Russia’s FSB Federal Security Service which wanted access to some messages for its work, including safeguarding against terrorist attacks, citing respect for user privacy.

Indeed, Durov has always been vocal against the sharing of confidential data with government entities.

False flag operation?

Meanwhile Durov has also dismissed questions about claims that Telegram was controlled by Russia as a false rumour spread by his competitors worried about Telegram’s growth.

“I would rather be free than to take orders from anyone,” Durov reportedly said about his exit from Russia.

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

However in 2020, access to Telegram was restored in Russia, sparking speculation that Telegram could have ties to the Russian government – an allegation that Telegram continues to deny.

Durov has at times cast himself as a Russian exile, but leaked border data seen by the Guardian showed that he visited Russia more than 50 times between 2015 and 2021, leading to renewed speculation over his links to the Kremlin.