French media reported that French police arrested Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov at an airport near Paris on Saturday for suspected crimes related to the popular messaging app.
The 39-year-old French-Russian billionaire was arrested on Saturday evening at Le Bourget airport north of the French capital, one of the officials told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
According to Reuters, French television channels TF1 TV and BFM TV also reported the arrest, citing unnamed sources.
He had just arrived from Baku in Azerbaijan, another source familiar with the case told AFP.
Durov was due to appear in court on Sunday.
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Telegram did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment, and the French Interior Ministry and French police also declined to comment.
The French agency OFMIN, which is responsible for preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant against Durov as the coordinating body in a preliminary investigation into suspected crimes including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime and promoting terrorism, a source familiar with the case told AFP.
Durov is suspected of not having taken any action against the criminal use of his platform.
“End impunity at Telegram,” said one of the investigators, adding that they were surprised that Durov came to Paris knowing that he was a wanted man.
Durov started Telegram in 2013 and left Russia in 2014 after his dismissal of VKontakte – a popular social network in Russia, which he co-founded – after being pressured by the Kremlin to hand over users’ personal data, which he refused to do.
In a 2016 interview with “60 Minutes,” Durov said he was “horrified” to learn that Telegram — which is so heavily encrypted that governments cannot access users’ personal information — is being used by terrorist groups such as the Islamic State to communicate.
“Personally, I am for data protection,” Durov said in this interview when asked whether privacy concerns outweigh security risks. “But one thing should be clear: you cannot just make an exception for law enforcement without endangering the private communications of hundreds of millions of people, because encryption is either secure or it is not.”
