The CEO of the controversial app was indicted in late August by two investigating judges for a litany of organized crime offenses.
Telegram messenger founder and CEO Pavel Durov on Thursday lashed out at France for arresting and indicting him over illegal content on the app. In a lengthy message on Telegram, his first reaction since his arrest, Durov found “surprising” to be held responsible for content posted by other people.
“Using pre-smartphone laws to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”the 39-year-old billionaire said. He also denounced claims that “Telegram is a kind of anarchic paradise”calling them“absolutely false”. “We remove millions of harmful messages and channels every day”and the insistence of Pavel Durov.
He refuted France’s accusations that Paris had not received any responses from Telegram to its requests. He said he had personally helped French authorities to “establish a telephone hotline with Telegram to deal with the terrorist threat in France”Adopting a more conciliatory tone at the end of his message, Pavel Durov acknowledged that the sharp increase in the number of Telegram users – which he now estimates at 950 million worldwide – had generated a situation that “made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform”.
Also read“Telegram, X: The era of irresponsibility for tech giants is over”
“Becoming safer”
“That’s why I’ve made it my personal goal to ensure that we make significant improvements in this regard.”he said, adding that the issue was being analyzed “an internal” and that further details would be communicated in the future. “I hope that the events of August will allow Telegram – and the social media industry as a whole – to become safer and stronger.”Pavel Durov further said. He added that if Telegram fails to reach an agreement with local regulators on the “good balance between privacy and security” SO “we would be ready to leave this country”.
After four days in police custody in France, Pavel Durov, who holds Russian, French and Emirati passports, is under investigation for numerous offences related to his messaging app and is banned from leaving the country. His heavy judicial supervision also provides for a bail of five million euros and a check-in at the police station twice a week. In Moscow, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that these proceedings against a “Russian citizen” should not “turn into political persecution”.
Notable supporters of the businessman include Russian-based American whistleblower Edward Snowden and tech mogul Elon Musk, who has posted under the hashtag #FreePavel. Durov, whose current fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $15.5 billion, was arrested at Le Bourget airport near Paris, where he had arrived by private jet. According to a source familiar with the case, Durov and his brother Nikolai, co-founders of Telegram, had been the subject of search warrants issued by the French justice system since March as part of a preliminary investigation.
Founded in 2013, the Telegram messaging service, which has always claimed to respect European laws, has committed to never revealing information about its users. A second investigation has also been opened against the billionaire for “serious violence” committed in Paris on one of his sons born in 2017, another source close to the case told AFP.
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