Telegram Founder Pavel Durov Charged Over Alleged Criminal Activity on the App

August 29, 2024:

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is forbidden from leaving French territory after being charged for complicity in running an online platform that allegedly enabled the spread of sexual images of children, creating an uncertain future for the messaging app that has become one of the world’s biggest social media platforms.

Durov was arrested on Saturday at 8 pm local time after his private jet landed at an airport near Paris. He was then detained for around 96 hours—the maximum a person can be held without being charged under French law—as part of an investigation into alleged criminal activity taking place on Telegram. On Wednesday evening, local time, he was indicted and forbidden from leaving the country, according to a statement released by the Paris Prosecutor. He was released under judicial supervision, the spokesperson said, without explaining what that involved.

The Telegram founder had was placed under formal investigation for a range of charges related to child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking, online hate crimes as well as a “neat-total absence” of cooperation with French authorities, Laure Beccuau, the Paris Prosecutor, said on Wednesday.

“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the abuse of that platform,” Telegram said on Sunday, before Durov was charged. The platform, which has 900 million active users, did not immediately respond to a request for comment to the charges.

Since his arrest, both the UAE and Russia have requested consular access to Durov, who has citizenship in both countries. It’s unclear why Durov, who also obtained a French passport after leaving Russia, was in France. “I don’t take holidays,” he said on his Telegram channel in June.

Russia has claimed, without evidence, that Durov’s arrest is an attempt by the United States to exert influence over the platform via France. “Telegram is one of the few and at the same time the largest Internet platforms over which the United States has no influence,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said on the app.

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Monday that Durov’s detention is “in no way a political decision.” “It is up to the judiciary, in full independence, to enforce the law,” he added in a post on X. The European Commission tells WIRED the arrest was conducted under French criminal law and is not connected to new European regulation for tech platforms. “We are closely monitoring the developments related to Telegram and stand ready to cooperate with the French authorities should it be relevant,” a spokesperson says, declining to be named.

Once known as Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg, Durov has said he got the idea for Telegram when he was still CEO of Vkontakte, the Russian social media company he founded in 2006. Under his leadership, the platform was dogged by allegations it was sharing data with the Kremlin, even as Durov appeared to publicly clash with Russian authorities over the political content VK was hosting. He told The New York Times that when a SWAT team appeared at his St Petersburg home in 2011, he realized he wanted to contact his brother but had no secure way of doing so. “That’s how Telegram started,” he said.

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