Pavel Durov, the Russian-French billionaire and founder of the Telegram messaging app, was detained at Bourget airport near Paris on Saturday evening, August 24, according to TF1 TV and BFM TV, citing unnamed sources.
Durov was on his private jet when he was arrested, as reported by TF1, which also noted that the arrest was linked to an existing warrant in France as part of an ongoing police investigation.
The investigation, according to TF1 and BFM, centers around concerns about the lack of moderators on Telegram, which authorities believe has allowed criminal activities to persist on the platform unchecked.
With nearly one billion users, Telegram is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet republics. It is ranked among the major social media platforms alongside Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and WeChat.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters, and both the French Interior Ministry and police declined to comment.
Durov, who was born in Russia, founded Telegram with his brother in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition groups on his VKontakte social media platform, which he eventually sold.
“I would rather be free than to take orders from anyone,” Durov told U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson in April, discussing his departure from Russia and his subsequent search for a new base for his company, which included time in Berlin, London, Singapore, and San Francisco.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has become a primary source of unfiltered – and sometimes graphic and misleading – information about the war and related political developments from both sides.
The platform has become what some analysts describe as “a virtual battlefield” for the conflict, heavily utilized by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his officials, as well as the Russian government.
Telegram’s ability to help users evade official scrutiny has made it one of the few remaining sources for independent news in Russia, following increased censorship by the Kremlin after the invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian foreign ministry announced that its embassy in Paris was investigating the situation surrounding Durov’s arrest and urged Western non-governmental organizations to demand his release.
Russia attempted to block Telegram in 2018 after the app refused a court order to provide state security services access to users’ encrypted messages.
While this move disrupted many third-party services, it had minimal impact on Telegram’s availability in Russia. However, the ban sparked widespread protests in Moscow and drew criticism from NGOs.
TF1 reported that Durov, who is based in Dubai and has an estimated fortune of $15.5 billion according to Forbes, was traveling from Azerbaijan when he was arrested around 8:00 p.m. (1800 GMT).
Durov has stated that while some governments have attempted to pressure him, he believes that Telegram should remain a “neutral platform” rather than a “player in geopolitics.”
Nevertheless, Telegram’s growing popularity has led to increased scrutiny from several European countries, including France, over security and data breach concerns.
In response to Durov’s arrest, Russia’s representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, along with several other Russian politicians, criticized France, accusing it of acting like a dictatorship – a charge similar to those Russia faced when it pressured Durov in 2014 and tried to ban Telegram in 2018.
“Some naive persons still don’t understand that if they play a more or less visible role in the international information space, it is not safe for them to visit countries that are moving towards much more totalitarian societies,” Ulyanov wrote on X.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter), commented on the reports of Durov’s detention, saying: “It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme.”
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