The boss of Telegram, who has been indicted for numerous offences linked to his messaging app, is threatening to close the platform in France.
The torch is burning between Pavel Durov, the boss of Telegram, and France. In a long message published this Thursday, September 5 on the platform, the founder of the secure messaging service broke his silence to contest the accusations made against him by the French justice system.
The Franco-Russian, indicted in a complaint against an unknown person, is notably criticized by France for not taking action against the dissemination of criminal or offending content on his platform. And, after refuting these accusations, the 39-year-old billionaire simply threatened to delete Telegram in France.
“We don’t do this for the money”
“Sometimes we cannot agree with a country’s regulator on the right balance between privacy and security,” explains the boss of the messaging service, who has made the defense of privacy one of his hobbyhorses.
“In this case, we are ready to leave this country. We have done this several times,” Pavel Durov says. “We are ready to leave markets that are not compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money.”
As the boss recalls in the rest of his message, Telegram was banned in Russia in 2011 after its boss refused to provide encryption keys to Russian authorities to monitor users.
In an effort to calm the situation, the platform’s boss then acknowledged in his message that “the sudden increase in the number of Telegram users to 950 million has caused growing pains that have made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.” He assures that he wants to “improve things in this regard,” specifying that the process has already been launched.
As a reminder, Pavel Durov, whose current fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $15.5 billion, was arrested on August 24 upon his arrival in France. The man, who holds Russian, French and Emirati passports, was then indicted for numerous offenses related to his messaging application and banned from leaving the country. His judicial supervision provides for a bail of five million euros and a check-in at the police station twice a week.
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