Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov arrested for alleged lack of moderation in the app and lack of cooperation with police
The reported arrest of Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire founder and owner of the messaging app Telegram, has reignited the debate between freedom of speech and content moderation.
Reuters reported, citing three sources, that 39-year-old Durov was arrested and taken into custody late Saturday evening shortly after landing on a private jet at Le Bourget airport near Paris.
The arrest of Pavel Durov prompted the owner of another social media platform for free speech, Elon Musk, repeated post Tweets critical of the French trainand claimed that freedom of expression in Europe was in danger.
Arrest of Pavel Durov
Reuters reported that there was no official confirmation of Durov’s arrest from France. However, two French police sources and a Russian source told the news agency that Durov was arrested at Le Bourget airport shortly after arriving on a private jet from Azerbaijan.
One of the two French police sources said that before the plane arrived, police noticed that he was on the passenger list and arrested him because there was an arrest warrant out for him in France.
“Telegram complies with EU laws, including the Digital Services Act – its moderation is in line with industry standards and is constantly improving,” Telegram said in a statement on the arrest.
“Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently throughout Europe,” it said. “It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the misuse of that platform.”
Durov, who lives in Dubai and has dual citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates, was arrested as part of a preliminary police investigation. He is accused of allowing a wide range of crimes to take place due to a lack of moderators on Telegram and a lack of cooperation with police, a third French police source told Reuters.
A gendarmerie cybersecurity unit and the French national anti-fraud unit are leading the investigation, the source said. The investigating judge specializes in organized crime.
Ironic move?
The arrest of Pavel Durov in France for alleged lack of cooperation with police and poor content moderation seems ironic to some, considering that he fled Russia after refusing to comply with Moscow’s censorship demands.
Dubai-based Telegram is widely used in countries of the former Soviet Union and the Middle East and is considered the most popular instant messaging application in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.
Founded in 2013 by Nikolai and Pavel Durov, Telegram has been growing steadily ever since, and is said to have nearly 1 billion users.
Telegram is 100 percent owned by Pavel Durov and Forbes estimates his fortune at $15.5 billion.
Pavel Durov left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with demands to close opposition communities on his social media platform VK, which he had sold.
Russian authorities had previously accused Telegram of enabling terrorists to communicate secretly through encrypted messages. They had also accused the app of hiding the messages of the suicide bomber who killed 15 people in Saint Petersburg in April 2017.
The app has also been used in the past by the Islamic State (IS) for propaganda purposes, particularly by terrorists based in Russia, but the company has made efforts to crack down on these terror accounts.
However, Telegram has consistently refused to comply with the demands of the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB, which wanted access to certain messages for its work, including to protect against terrorist attacks, on the grounds of respecting the privacy of its users.
In fact, Durov has always been vocal in his opposition to sharing confidential data with government agencies.
Durov also dismissed questions about claims that Telegram is controlled by Russia, calling them a false rumor spread by competitors concerned about Telegram’s growth.
“I would rather be free than take orders from anyone,” Durov reportedly said about his departure from Russia.
Russia began blocking Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to comply with a court order giving the state security service access to its users’ encrypted messages.
