Accompanied by his bodyguard and his assistant, the 39-year-old Russian billionaire founder of the messaging service was arrested on Saturday evening in the Bourget airport terminal (north of Paris) under a French search warrant, then taken into police custody.
Mr Durov was arriving from Baku and was due to spend at least the evening in Paris, where he had planned to have dinner.
He was arrested as part of a judicial investigation opened against an unknown person on July 8 and led by specialized investigating judges from Paris, after a preliminary inquiry by the cybercrime section of the Paris prosecutor’s office.
Complicity?
It targets in particular the “refusal to communicate information necessary for interceptions authorized by law”, the complicity in offenses and crimes which are organized on the platform (drug trafficking, child pornography, fraud and money laundering by organized gangs) and “the provision of cryptology services aimed at ensuring confidentiality functions without a proper declaration”.
The investigations are entrusted to the Center for the Fight against Digital Crime (C3N) and the National Anti-Fraud Office (Onaf).
Mr. Durov’s police custody, which was taking place at ONAF, ended early Wednesday afternoon, according to a source close to the case to AFP.
AFP journalists observed two police cars with tinted windows leaving the Onaf parking lot.
“The investigating judge has terminated Pavel Durov’s police custody and has brought him before the court for initial questioning and potential indictment,” a judicial source told AFP.
If Mr Durov were charged and his pre-trial detention were requested, a judge of liberties and detention would have to decide at the end of the day whether to incarcerate him or to put him under judicial supervision.
Paper airplanes
The arrest of Dubai-based Pavel Durov has sparked strong reactions around the world. He has received support from Russian-based American whistleblower Edward Snowden and Elon Musk, the American boss of X.
In Moscow, Deputy Speaker of the Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament), Vladislav Davankov, and members of his liberal New People party placed paper planes in the shape of the Telegram logo in front of the French embassy on Sunday.
“The accusations made are very serious and require equally solid evidence,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, denouncing an “attempt at intimidation.”
President Emmanuel Macron assured on 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 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 notably committed to never revealing information about its users.
“Telegram complies with European laws, including the Digital Services Regulation, its moderation action is in line with the industry standard,” Telegram defended itself on its own channel on Sunday evening, considering it “absurd to say that a platform or its boss are responsible for the abuses” noted on the platform.