(Paris) The police custody of Telegram boss Pavel Durov was extended on Sunday evening, the day after his arrest at a Paris airport, after a search warrant was issued against him by French investigators targeting various violations of his encrypted messaging service.
Accompanied by his bodyguard and his assistant who follow him constantly, the 39-year-old Franco-Russian billionaire was arrested on Saturday evening in the Bourget airport terminal, north of Paris, a source close to the case told AFP.
The Telegram founder was arriving from Baku and was due to spend at least the evening in Paris, where he had planned to have dinner, a source close to the investigation added.
According to another source close to the investigation, the Paris investigating judge in charge of this judicial investigation, which particularly targets acts committed by an organized gang, extended his police custody on Sunday evening. It could last a maximum of 96 hours.
At the end of this, Pavel Durov could be released or presented to this magistrate with a view to a possible indictment (charge).
The Office for Combating Violence against Minors (OFMIN) had issued a search warrant against Pavel Durov for offences ranging from fraud to drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime, advocacy of terrorism and fraud, explained one of the sources close to the case.
Since then, on an unspecified date, a judicial investigation was opened by the cyber division (J3) of JUNALCO (national jurisdiction for the fight against organized crime), according to another source close to the case.
The investigations have been entrusted to the National Cyber Unit (UNC) of the national gendarmerie and to ONAF, the national anti-fraud office dependent on customs, where the police custody is taking place, according to two sources close to the case.
The courts have accused Pavel Durov of not taking action against the criminal use of his messaging service by his subscribers, particularly through a lack of moderation and collaboration with investigators.
“Pavel Durov has nothing to hide”
“Enough of Telegram’s impunity,” said one of the investigators, surprised that the billionaire, knowing that he was wanted in France, had decided to come to Paris anyway. “Perhaps out of a sense of impunity,” said one of the sources close to the case.
“Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and he travels frequently to Europe,” Telegram said on its own channel on Sunday evening. “It is absurd to say that a platform or its boss are responsible for the abuses” found on the platform, the company added.
“Telegram complies with European laws, including the Digital Services Regulation, and its moderation actions are in line with industry standards,” she added.
The online messaging service launched in 2013 by Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai, on which communications can be encrypted from end to end and whose head office is 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.
Elon Musk’s support
Pavel Durov’s arrest has sparked a number of international reactions. “#FreePavel,” the platform’s boss, Elon Musk, posted on X, before posting a new message in French saying “Freedom. Freedom! Freedom?”
In Russia, where Telegram is one of the most widely used social networks with channels that can have several hundred thousand subscribers, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “the Russian embassy in Paris immediately got to work, as is customary” in cases of detention of Russian citizens abroad.
She also recalled that many international NGOs had condemned a Russian court’s decision to block Telegram in 2018, a decision that was never fully implemented. “Do you think that this time they will appeal, demand Durov’s release, or keep quiet?” she asked on her Telegram page.
Pavel Durov said in a rare video interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in April that he came up with the idea of launching an encrypted messaging service after being pressured by Russian authorities at the time of VK, a social network he created in his home country before selling it and leaving Russia in 2014.
He said he then tried to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before opting for Dubai, where he praised its business environment and “neutrality”.
“I think we’re doing a good job with Telegram, with 900 million users that will probably exceed 1 billion monthly active users within a year,” he said.
In the Gulf emirate, the Telegram messaging service has protected itself from state moderation rules, at a time when both the European Union and the United States are putting pressure on major platforms to remove illegal content.