Telegram boss Pavel Durov was indicted on Wednesday, August 28, by two Parisian investigating judges accusing him of not taking action against the dissemination of criminal content on the messaging service, and was given a heavy judicial review requiring him to remain in France, at the risk of provoking further angry reactions around the world.
Accompanied by his bodyguard and his assistant, the billionaire founder of the messaging service, of Russian origin and aged 39, was arrested on Saturday evening in the Bourget airport terminal (north of Paris) under a French search warrant, then taken into police custody.
Pavel Durov was arriving from Baku and was due to spend at least the evening in Paris, where he had planned to have dinner. According to a source close to the case, confirming Politico, Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai, both co-founders of Telegram in 2013, had been the subject of search warrants issued by the French justice system since March as part of a preliminary investigation.
Complicity?
The investigations are entrusted to the Center for the Fight against Digital Crime (C3N) and the National Anti-Fraud Office (ONAF). Pavel Durov’s police custody, which began on Saturday and took place at ONAF, ended on Wednesday early afternoon.
Pavel Durov was presented to two investigating judges who, according to a press release from Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau, charged him after several hours of questioning with numerous offences: “refusal to communicate information necessary for interceptions authorised by law”, complicity in offences and crimes organised on the platform (drug trafficking, pedophilia, fraud and money laundering by an organised gang) and “provision of cryptology services aimed at ensuring confidentiality functions without a proper declaration”.
Released, Pavel Durov is subject to a strict judicial supervision, which provides for the obligation to pay a bail of 5 million euros and to report to the police station twice a week, and the prohibition to leave French territory, according to the press release from Ms. Beccuau. When contacted, his lawyer did not comment.
In her press release, the Paris prosecutor explains that Telegram “appears in multiple files relating to different offences (pedophile crime, trafficking, online hatred)” and displays an “almost total lack of response from Telegram to judicial requisitions”, reported to the prosecution “in particular by the National Office for Minors (Ofmin)”.
According to a source close to the case, Telegram’s positive responses to French judicial requisitions in recent years can in fact be counted on the fingers of one hand.
According to the prosecutor, “when consulted, other French investigation services and public prosecutors as well as various partners within Eurojust, particularly Belgian, shared the same observation”, triggering the opening of an investigation “into the possible criminal responsibility of the directors of this messaging service in the commission of these offences”.
“Intimidation”
The arrest of Pavel Durov, based in Dubai, has sparked strong reactions around the world. He has notably received support from the American whistleblower based in Russia Edward Snowden and from Elon Musk, American boss of X. In Moscow, the spokesman for the Russian presidency Dmitry Peskov affirmed on Tuesday that “the accusations put forward are very serious and they require equally solid evidence”, denouncing an “attempt at intimidation”.
President Emmanuel Macron assured Monday that the arrest of Pavel Durov was “in no way a political decision” but was “part of a judicial investigation”, adding that France was “committed to freedom of expression and communication”. The two men had lunch together in 2018.
The online messaging service that Pavel Durov launched in 2013 with 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 has promised never to reveal information about its users.
“Telegram complies with European laws […]its moderation action is in line with the industry standard,” Telegram defended itself on its own channel on Sunday evening, deeming it “absurd to say that a platform or its boss are responsible for the abuses” noted on said platform.
Pavel Durov settled in Dubai and obtained UAE nationality, then, in August 2021, French nationality thanks to a rare procedure on which Paris remains very discreet. His legal troubles are not limited: a source close to the case told AFP on Wednesday that a second investigation had just been opened targeting Pavel Durov for “serious violence” against one of his children in Paris, entrusted to the Office for Minors (Ofmin).
The acts were allegedly committed against a son of the Franco-Russian billionaire born in 2017, while he was at school in Paris. The young boy now lives in Switzerland with his mother, who filed a complaint in that country in 2023, accusing her ex-partner of violence against one of her children, continued the source close to the case. Pavel Durov is, according to Forbes magazine, at the head of a fortune estimated at 15.5 billion dollars.