Telegram Founder Pavel Durov Arrested in France

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Aug. 24, 2024

Pavel Durov, founder of the free speech-focused app Telegram, was arrested in France on Saturday allegedly as part of an investigation into his platform for not having enough "moderation."


From Reuters, "Telegram messaging app CEO Durov arrested in France":
Pavel Durov, billionaire founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV and BFM TV said, citing unnamed sources.

Telegram, particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union, is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat. It aims to hit one billion users in the next year.

[...] Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France as part of a preliminary police investigation.

TF1 and BFM both said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered that this situation allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
"Pavel Durov left Russia when the government tried to control his social media company, Telegram," Tucker Carlson commented on X. "But in the end, it wasn’t Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise free speech. It was a western country, a Biden administration ally and enthusiastic NATO member, that locked him away."

"Pavel Durov sits in a French jail tonight, a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies," Carlson added. "Darkness is descending fast on the formerly free world."


Durov told Carlson in a rare interview in April that he look at basing his platform in the US but chose not to because the FBI was spying on him and his employees and trying to get backdoor access to Telegram.

Kim Dotcom said on X that he believes Durov was arrested because "Western intelligence services want access to Telegram's private messages."



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