Telegram Founder Changed Mind on Setting Up Shop in San Francisco After Being Robbed Leaving Twitter HQ

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Apr. 16, 2024

Telegram founder Pavel Durov told Tucker Carlson in an interview released on Tuesday that he looked into setting up shop in San Francisco but changed his mind after being robbed by "three big guys" in broad daylight upon leaving from a meeting with Jack Dorsey at Twitter's headquarters.


"This is the only country where I got attacked in the street," Durov said. "It was a shock to me because I traveled a lot, that was the first place I got attacked and I thought, alright, maybe we shouldn't look at San Francisco, maybe there are other places in America."

Durov also said his decision not to base his company in the US was also driven by he and his employees being spied on and pressured by the feds.


"Last time I was in the US I brought an engineer that is working for Telegram," Durov said, "and there was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by cyber security officers or agents, whatever they are called."

"They were curious to learn which open source libraries are integrated to the Telegram app on the client side. And they were trying to persuade him to use certain open source tools that he would then integrate into Telegram's code that, in my understanding, would serve as backdoors."


"Whenever I would go to the US I would have two FBI agents greeting me at the airport, asking questions. One time I was having my breakfast at 9 am and the FBI showed up [at]... my house. That was quite surprising. I thought, we're getting too much attention here. It's probably not the best environment to run an [app]," Durov said.

"They were interested to learn more about Telegram. They knew I left Russia. They knew what we were doing, but they wanted details. My understanding is that they wanted to establish a relationship to control Telegram better," he continued.

Durov also said he refused to hand over user data on accused J6ers:


Durov chose to base Telegram in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and said he's never once pressure him to spy on users or hand over user data.

Of note, Durov said he thinks the internet is getting freer thanks in part to Elon Musk buying Twitter and predicted new secure communication devices will be created in the future to increase privacy.

Watch the full interview below:


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