PARIS (Reuters) -Pavel Durov, the Russian-French billionaire founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at Bourget airport exterior Paris on Saturday night, TF1 TV and BFM TV mentioned, citing unnamed sources.
Durov was travelling aboard his non-public jet, TF1 mentioned on its web site, including he had been focused by an arrest warrant in France as a part of a preliminary police investigation.
TF1 and BFM each mentioned the investigation was targeted on an absence of moderators on Telegram, and that police thought-about that this example allowed prison exercise to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
The encrypted Telegram, with shut to at least one billion customers, is especially influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the previous Soviet Union. It’s ranked as one of many main social media platforms after Fb (NASDAQ:), YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.
Telegram didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark. The French Inside Ministry and police had no remark.
Russian-born Durov based Telegram together with his brother in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to adjust to authorities calls for to close down opposition communities on his VKontakte social media platform, which he offered.
“I would rather be free than to take orders from anyone,” Durov instructed U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson in April about his exit from Russia and seek for a house for his firm which included stints in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has change into the primary supply of unfiltered – and typically graphic and deceptive – content material from either side concerning the warfare and the politics surrounding the battle.
The platform has change into what some analysts name ‘a digital battlefield’ for the warfare, used closely by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his officers, in addition to the Russian authorities.
Telegram – which permits customers to evade official scrutiny – has additionally change into one of many few locations the place Russians can entry unbiased information concerning the warfare after the Kremlin elevated curbs on unbiased media following its invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian overseas ministry mentioned its embassy in Paris was clarifying the state of affairs round Durov and known as on Western non-governmental organisations to demand his launch.
Russia started blocking Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to adjust to a court docket order to grant state safety companies entry to its customers’ encrypted messages.
The motion interrupted many third-party companies, however had little impact on the provision of Telegram there. The ban order, nevertheless, sparked mass protests in Moscow and criticism from NGOs.
‘NEUTRAL PLATFORM’
TF1 mentioned Dubai-based Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at round 8.00 p.m. (1800 GMT).
Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, mentioned some governments had sought to stress him however the app ought to stay a “neutral platform” and never a “player in geopolitics”.
Telegram’s rising recognition, nevertheless, has prompted scrutiny from a number of international locations in Europe, together with France, on safety and knowledge breach considerations.
Russia’s consultant to worldwide organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and several other different Russian politicians have been fast on Sunday to accuse France of appearing as a dictatorship – the identical criticism that Moscow confronted when placing calls for on Durov in 2014 and making an attempt to ban Telegram in 2018.
“Some naive persons still don’t understand that if they play more or less visible role in international information space it is not safe for them to visit countries which move towards much more totalitarian societies,” Ulyanov wrote on X.
Elon Musk, billionaire proprietor of X, the social media platform previously referred to as Twitter, mentioned after experiences of Durov’s detention: “It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme.”
A number of Russian bloggers known as for protests at French embassies all through the world at midday on Sunday.
