Telegram founder and blockchain pioneer TON Pavel Durov is due to appear in a French court on Sunday afternoon local time, following his arrest at a Paris airport on suspicion of wrongdoing related to the messaging app. Meanwhile, social media CEO Rumble Chris Pavlovski said he had arrived in Paris to help Durov get free as soon as possible.
Sources from news agencies AFP as reported by The Guardian said the French-Russian tech billionaire would appear in court after being detained by police at Le Bourget airport.
French investigators have issued arrest warrants for the UAE and French national as part of a probe into allegations of fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, promoting terrorism and cyberbullying.
Pavel Durov is accused of failing to take action to curb criminal activity in platform-and was stopped after arriving in Paris from the city of Baku on his private jet on Saturday night.
The figure of Pavel Durov, from VKontakte, Telegram, to Pioneering the TON Blockchain
“Enough with Telegram’s impunity,” said one investigator, shocked that Durov flew to Paris despite knowing he was a fugitive.
Russian authorities have accused France of “refusing to cooperate”. The Russian Embassy in Paris has requested access to Durov and said France has so far “avoided involvement” in the situation.
Pavel Durov left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with Kremlin demands to close opposition group accounts on the VK social network he founded when he was 22.
He left VK after a dispute with its Kremlin-linked owners and shifted focus to Telegram, the app he founded with his brother Nikolai in 2013.
Initially, Telegram was similar to other messaging apps, but it has evolved into something more like a social network. In addition to one-on-one communication, users can join groups of up to 200,000 people and create “channel” broadcasts that others can follow and leave comments on, with 950 million monthly active users. On August 14, 2024, Telegram celebrated 11th anniversary.
Durov lives in Dubai, Telegram’s headquarters, and holds French and United Arab Emirates (UAE) citizenship. He recently said he had tried living in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before settling on Dubai, which he praised for its business environment and “neutrality.” The UAE is a member of the bloc. BRICS which is trying to get out of using the US dollar in international trade.
In the UAE, Telegram faces little pressure to moderate its content, while Western governments seek to crack down on hate speech, disinformation, the spread of child abuse imagery and other illegal content.
Former Russian president and current deputy head of Russia's tough-talking security council, Dmitry Medvedev, claimed that Durov had made a mistake by fleeing Russia and thinking he would never have to cooperate with security services abroad.
“He miscalculated. For all the enemies, we are together now, he is Russian and therefore unpredictable and dangerous,” he said as quoted by The Guardian.
Writing in X after the arrest, US right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson described Durov as “a living warning to every platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intelligence services.”
In an interview with Carlson earlier this year, Durov said the app should remain “aplatform neutral” and not “a player in geopolitics.”
In the interview, Durov said that he got the idea to launch an encrypted messaging app after coming under pressure from the Russian government while working at VK.
“Users love the independent nature of the Telegram app. They also love the privacy, freedom, [ada] there are many reasons why someone would switch to Telegram,” he told Carlson.
Billionaire social media tycoon Elon Musk reposted a clip from the interview in which Durov praised Musk's takeover of X as a “huge development” with hashtag “FreePavel”.
Commenting on the arrests, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who last week dropped his presidential candidacy to endorse Donald Trump, said: “The need to protect free speech has never been more urgent.”
Rumble CEO Tries to Help Free Pavel Durov
Meanwhile, the CEO of social media Rumble, Chris Pavlovski admitted that he had arrived in Paris to help Durov get free as soon as possible. He said that in X Today.
“I just left and arrived in Europe. France has threatened Rumble before, and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, reportedly for not censoring free speech. Rumble will not tolerate this behavior and will use all legal means available to fight for freedom of expression, a universal human right. We are currently fighting in the French courts, and we hope Pavel Durov will be released soon,” he wrote.
Until now there has been no official statement from Telegram and the French authorities. [ps]
