unsaveSave
Telegram founder Pavel Durov during a visit to Indonesia in 2017.
1 / 3Photo: Tatan Syuflana/AP/TT
Champion of freedom of expression or shy criminal?
Telegram founder Pavel Durov, sometimes called Russia’s Elon Musk, is described as an eccentric genius with a breathtaking fortune. His arrest in France is surrounded by question marks – as is his life and relationship with power in Moscow.
On a May day in 2012, paper airplanes start raining over St. Petersburg’s main street, Nevsky Prospect.
A few floors up, Pavel Durov, then 28, hangs out of a window and watches with amusement as an excited crowd discovers that the planes are weighted with five thousand ruble notes – worth the equivalent of around SEK 500.
At this point, Durov is the CEO of his first creation: VKontakte, a Russian Facebook copy that has grown at record speed thanks to its almost complete lack of regulation and moderation in authoritarian Russia.
But when the powers in Moscow begin to demand influence in 2014, in the wake of the invasion of Crimea and anti-regime protests at home, the founder sells his stake and flees his homeland. Together with his older brother Nikolaj – according to the rumor the true genius of the brothers – he founded the encrypted messaging service Telegram.
Father of 100 children
Pavel Durov, who has been locked up in a French prison since the weekend, presents himself as a champion of freedom of expression and the individual’s freedom from the state. The charges against him are about just that: the obscure, criminal content allowed on Telegram in the name of freedom of censorship, including child abuse material, drug and arms trafficking, and incitement to violence and terrorism.
Prior to his arrest, Durov – who is said to have citizenship in France and the United Arab Emirates, but possibly also Russia and Saint Kitts and Nevis – led a fairly low-key existence. What is known about his private life paints the picture of a wealthy, eccentric man: private jets, infinity pools, exotic travel destinations. Always dressed in black, he lives alone and abstains from meat, coffee and alcohol. In July, he claimed to have fathered over 100 children via sperm donation.
According to Forbes’ latest calculation, Durov has a fortune of about 15.5 billion dollars.
Met Putin?
Since the arrest, there are many question marks. Not least, it is a mystery what the 39-year-old did in France, when he most likely knew he was wanted.
Questions are also piling up about his relationship with his homeland. In recent years, Telegram has restricted a number of Russian opposition channels on unclear grounds, writes Politico, which has led to speculation about Durov’s connections to power in the Kremlin. When the tech billionaire was arrested in Paris on Saturday, his private jet had just landed from Azerbaijan, where Russian President Vladimir Putin was at the time.
The Kremlin has denied that the two met in Baku.
FACT Telegram
The messaging service Telegram was launched in 2013 by the brothers Nikolaj and Pavel Durov.
It currently has, according to its own statement, more than 950 million users.
The service is cloud-based and allows users to send and receive encrypted messages, images, videos and other types of data files. Users can also send out messages to an unlimited number of recipients via so-called Telegram channels.
Telegram is used by government representatives in several countries and has, among other things, been a widely used source of information during Russia’s war in Ukraine. Not least, accounts belonging to pro-Russian military bloggers have spread enormously.
In countries with severe internet censorship, the app has served as a way to get around restrictions – for example, Telegram was used to coordinate the regime-critical protests in Iran in 2022.
At the same time, the service’s encryption capabilities and lack of moderation have made it popular among more shady actors, such as drug dealers and pedophiles.
Read more