After being detained by French police at an airport close to Paris on suspicion of offenses connected to his well-known messaging program, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is scheduled to appear in court on Sunday, according to sources who spoke to AFP.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one of the sources claimed that the 39-year-old Franco-Russian billionaire had been arrested at Le Bourget airport, north of the French capital, on Saturday night.
According to a second person familiar with the situation, Durov had traveled from Baku, in Azerbaijan.
According to one of the sources, Durov was the subject of an arrest warrant issued by France’s OFMIN, an institution entrusted with preventing violence against minors, as part of a preliminary probe into allegations of fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime, and terrorism promotion.
Durov is accused of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform.
“Enough of Telegram’s impunity,” said one of the investigators, adding they were surprised Durov came to Paris knowing he was a wanted man.
The encrypted messaging app, based in Dubai, has positioned itself as an alternative to US-owned platforms, which have been criticised for their commercial exploitation of users’ personal data.
Telegram has committed to never disclosing any information about its users.
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, he attempted to live in Berlin, London, Singapore, and San Francisco before deciding on Dubai, which he commended for its “neutrality” and business-friendly atmosphere.
People “appreciate their freedom. There are numerous reasons why someone would go to Telegram, including their passion of privacy and independence,” Durov said to Carlson.
At the time, he claimed that there were over 900 million active users on the network.
By basing itself in the United Arab Emirates, Telegram has been able to shield itself from moderation laws at a time when Western countries are pressuring large platforms to remove illegal content.
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.
