25th August, 2024
Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening by French police, Reuters has reported quoting TF1 TV and BFM TV .
Reuters, quoted the two sources as reporting that Durov, a billionaire, was travelling aboard his private jet was arrested in France as part of a preliminary police investigation of Telegram ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.
The app that is influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union aims to hit one billion users in the next year.
Based in Dubai, Telegram was founded by Russian-born Durov.
Durov left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.
According to TF1 and BFM, Durov was arrested over investigation on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered that this situation allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The French Interior Ministry and police had no comment.
TF1 said Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 20:00 (18:00 GMT).
Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, said some governments had sought to pressure him but the app, which has now 900 million active users, should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics”.
Russia’s embassy in France told the Russian state TASS news agency that it was not contacted by Durov’s team after the reports of the arrest, but it was taking “immediate” steps to clarify the situation.
Russia’s representative to international organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and several other Russian politicians were quick to accuse France of acting as a dictatorship.
“Some naive persons still don’t understand that if they play more or less visible role in international information space it is not safe for them to visit countries which move towards much more totalitarian societies,” Ulyanov wrote on X.
Several Russian bloggers called for protests at French embassies throughout the world at noon on Sunday.
Credit: Reuters
