Aug 25, 2024 16:00:00

Telegram's founder and CEO Pavel Durov reportedly arrested in France

It has been reported that

Pavel Durov , founder and CEO of Telegram , a popular, highly anonymous messaging app, was arrested by the National Gendarmerie as he disembarked from a private jet at Le Bourget Airport on the outskirts of Paris, France.

INFO TF1/LCI : le fondateur et PDG de la messagerie Telegram interpellé en France | TF1 INFO
https://www.tf1info.fr/justice-faits-divers/info-tf1-lci-le-fondateur-et-pdg-de-la-messagerie-cryptee-telegram-interpelle-en-france-2316072.html

Telegram founder Pavel Durov reportedly arrested in France | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/24/telegram-founder-pavel-durov-reportedly-arrested-in-france/

According to a report by French media INFO TF1 , Mr. Durov, who arrived in France from Azerbaijan on a private jet at around 8 p.m. local time on Saturday, August 24, 2024, was arrested by the National Gendarmerie, one of the French police organizations.

At the time of his arrest, Durov was accompanied by a bodyguard and a woman. An arrest warrant had been issued for Durov based on a preliminary investigation by OFMIN, a French investigative agency that focuses on child sexual exploitation.

French judicial authorities have criticized Telegram for its lack of content moderation and unwillingness to cooperate with law enforcement, and Durov was reportedly arrested as an accomplice to criminal activities, including drug trafficking, money laundering and child pornography, conducted through the Telegram app.

Regarding Durov's arrest, technology media TechCrunch pointed out that 'it could spark further debate about the extent to which messaging apps should be legally liable for the messages their users share.'

According to the economic newspaper Forbes, Durov's assets are estimated to be as much as $15.5 billion (approximately 2.2 trillion yen). Durov is a Russian-born French-Russian who is also known as the founder of VK, Russia's largest social networking site, in addition to Telegram. However, he left Russia in 2014 after receiving pressure from the Russian government to release data on Ukrainian protest leaders. Since then, Durov has reportedly been living in Dubai, where Telegram is based.

As of July 2024, Telegram has 950 million active users, with a goal of reaching 1 billion by 2024. However, it is known that Telegram employs only about 30 engineers in-house, which is a very small development team for such a large app, and it seems that Durov's role was very large.

·bonus
Following Durov's arrest, Elon Musk posted '#FreePavel' to his X account, along with a video of Durov praising Musk for buying Twitter (now X) in the name of freedom of speech.