Telegram CEO Pavel Durov arrested in France, reports say

Pavel Durov, the co-founder and chief executive 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 about the matter will be issued on Monday.

Law enforcement agents reportedly arrested Durov at Le Bourget Airport outside of Paris, where he was arriving on his private jet from Azerbaijan, according to multiple French press reports.

AFP reported that an arrest warrant had been issued for Durov as a result of an investigation into whether he has failed to crack down on illegal activity including drug trafficking, the promotion of terrorism and fraud on Telegram.

The French newspaper Le Monde reported that the probe is examining whether Durov has refused to cooperate with law enforcement over issues including cyberscams and the spread of child pornography on Telegram.

The Russian Embassy in France released a statement saying it had asked French authorities for an explanation for Durov’s detention and asked that his rights be protected and consular access be granted.

Durov, a 39-year-old Russian-born billionaire, is a dual citizen of France and the United Arab Emirates, where he runs Telegram, the Dubai-based messaging service with nearly 1 billion global users.

He is considered “Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg” for in 2007 founding 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 his refusal to hand over data on Ukrainian users of VK to Russian authorities.

When Telegram first started, cryptocurrency fanatics were quick to embrace it, and the app has since risen to become one of the most popular messaging services in the world. It has emerged as a go-to place for unfiltered updates on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Telegram has a laissez-faire approach to moderating content, which has drawn concern from researchers, who have noted how misinformation, extremism and illicit activity, like drug sales and child pornography, often goes unmoderated.

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

On Durov’s Instagram, he is often photographed bare-chested, showing off his muscular physique in desert landscapes or posing in infinity pools.

He is regularly seen sporting all-black outfits in an apparent nod to the character Neo from the movie The Matrix.

Content on Telegram ricochets around the web when it is shared to other social networks, where it can often be subject to the content moderation rules of other platforms. But Durov has long championed Telegram as an anything-goes service, with Durov’s supporters hailing him as a free speech hero.