Telegram CEO Pavel Durov reportedly arrested in France

Pavel Durov, co-founder and CEO of the messaging service Telegram, was arrested and detained on Saturday, according to French media reports.

The Paris prosecutor's office told NPR that a statement on the matter would be released on Monday.

According to several French press reports, law enforcement officials arrested Durov at Le Bourget airport outside Paris, where he arrived on his private jet from Azerbaijan.

AFP reported that an arrest warrant was issued for Durov following an investigation into whether he failed to take action against illegal activities such as drug trafficking, promoting terrorism and fraud on Telegram.

The French newspaper The World reported that the investigation is examining whether Durov refused to cooperate with law enforcement in cases such as cyber fraud and the distribution of child pornography on Telegram.

The Russian Embassy in France said in a statement that it had asked the French authorities for an explanation for Durov's detention and asked them to protect his rights and grant him consular access.

Durov, a 39-year-old billionaire of Russian origin, holds dual citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates, where he runs Telegram, the Dubai-based messaging service with nearly a billion users worldwide.

He is considered the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia” because in 2007 he founded VKontakte (Russian for “in touch”), a Facebook copycat site that became the country’s most popular social network.

In 2013, Durov and his brother Nikolai launched Telegram. Pavel Durov fled Russia a year later after refusing to hand over data about Ukrainian VK users to Russian authorities.

When Telegram first launched, it was very popular among cryptocurrency fanatics and the app has since grown into one of the most popular messaging services in the world. It has established itself as a place to go for unfiltered updates on the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.

Telegram takes a laissez-faire approach to content moderation, which has raised concerns among researchers who have found that misinformation, extremism and illegal activities such as drug trafficking and child pornography often go unmoderated.

Some experts I even suspected that Telegram might have links to the Kremlin, which Durov described as “inaccurate” an interview in March with the Financial Timesthe first time since 2017 that the reclusive CEO has spoken to the press.

On Durov's Instagram, he is often photographed shirtless, showing off his muscular body in desert landscapes or posing in infinity pools.

He is regularly seen in all-black outfits, apparently in reference to the character Neo from the film The matrix.

Content on Telegram spreads across the internet when shared on other social networks, where it is often subject to other platforms' moderation rules. But Durov has long been a proponent of Telegram as a service where anything goes, and his followers celebrate him as a hero of free speech.

Copyright: NPR