Emmanuel Macron wants to respond to “false information”. The head of state assured, this Monday, August 26, that the arrest on French territory of the boss of the encrypted messaging service Telegram, Pavel Durov, was “in no way a political decision”, recalling that France was “committed to freedom of expression and communication”.
“The arrest of the Telegram president on French territory took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. This is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to decide,” the French president said on the social network X.
“In a state governed by the rule of law, on social networks as in real life, freedoms are exercised within a framework established by law to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights,” recalled the French president.
Multiple offenses
The 39-year-old billionaire, who has French and Russian nationality, was arrested on Saturday evening at the Bourget airport terminal, north of Paris, a source close to the case told AFP, as he arrived from Baku in Azerbaijan.
The Office for Combating Violence against Minors (Ofmin) had issued a search warrant against Pavel Durov for offences ranging from fraud to drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime, advocating terrorism and fraud, another source close to the case explained.
The online messaging service launched in 2013 by Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai, on which communications can be encrypted from end to end and whose headquarters are in Dubai, has positioned itself against the grain of American platforms, criticized for their commercial exploitation of personal data. Telegram, which is one of the most used social networks in Russia with channels that can have several hundred thousand subscribers, has notably committed to never revealing information about its users.