Pavel Durov, the Russian-French billionaire founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at Bourget airport outdoors Paris on Saturday night, TF1 TV and BFM TV mentioned, citing unidentified sources.
Durov was travelling aboard his personal jet, TF1 mentioned on its web site, including he had been focused by an arrest warrant in France as a part of a preliminary police investigation.
TF1 and BFM each mentioned the investigation was centered on an absence of moderators on Telegram, and that police thought of that this case allowed prison exercise to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
Durov faces doable indictment on Sunday, based on French media.
The encrypted Telegram, with near a billion customers, is especially influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the previous Soviet Union. It’s ranked as one of many main social media platforms after Fb, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and WeChat.
Telegram didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. The French inside ministry and police had no remark.
Russian-born Durov based Telegram together with his brother in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to adjust to authorities calls for to close down opposition communities on his VKontakte social media platform, which he offered.
‘Somewhat be free’
“I might relatively be free than to take orders from anybody,” Durov advised US journalist Tucker Carlson in April about his exit from Russia and seek for a house for his firm which included stints in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has turn into the principle supply of unfiltered — and generally graphic and deceptive — content material from either side concerning the conflict and the politics surrounding the battle.
The platform has turn into what some analysts name “a digital battlefield” for the conflict, used closely by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his officers, in addition to the Russian authorities.
Learn: Telegram in the dead of night as to why fines in Russia had been dropped
Telegram — which permits customers to evade official scrutiny — has additionally turn into one of many few locations the place Russians can entry impartial information concerning the conflict after the Kremlin elevated curbs on impartial media following its invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian overseas ministry mentioned its embassy in Paris was clarifying the scenario round Durov and referred to as on Western non-governmental organisations to demand his launch.
Russia started blocking Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to adjust to a courtroom order to grant state safety providers entry to its customers’ encrypted messages. The motion interrupted many third-party providers however had little impact on the supply of Telegram there. The ban order, nonetheless, sparked mass protests in Moscow and criticism from NGOs.
TF1 mentioned Dubai-based Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at round 8pm SAST.
Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at US$15.5-billion, mentioned some governments had sought to stress him however the app ought to stay a “impartial platform” and never a “participant in geopolitics”.
Telegram’s rising recognition, nonetheless, has prompted scrutiny from a number of nations in Europe, together with France, on safety and information breach considerations.
POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and also you’re being executed for liking a meme https://t.co/OkZ6YS3u2P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 24, 2024
Russia’s consultant to worldwide organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and several other different Russian politicians had been fast on Sunday to accuse France of appearing as a dictatorship — the identical criticism that Moscow confronted when placing calls for on Durov in 2014 and making an attempt to ban Telegram in 2018.
“Some naive individuals nonetheless don’t perceive that in the event that they play roughly seen function in worldwide info house it’s not protected for them to go to nations which transfer in direction of way more totalitarian societies,” Ulyanov wrote on X.
Elon Musk, billionaire proprietor of X, the social media platform previously referred to as Twitter, mentioned after stories of Durov’s detention: “It’s 2030 in Europe and also you’re being executed for liking a meme.” — Ingrid Melander, Gilles Guillaume, Lidia Kelly and Camille Raynaud, (c) 2024 Reuters
