Franco-Russian billionaire Pavel Durov, head of the encrypted messaging service Telegram, arrested Saturday evening in France, was released from police custody and transferred early Wednesday afternoon to the Paris courthouse with a view to possible indictment, AFP learned from a source close to the case.
“The investigating judge has terminated Pavel Durov’s police custody and has brought him before the court for initial questioning and potential indictment,” a judicial source told AFP.
Pavel Durov, 39, whose fortune is estimated by the American magazine Forbes at 15.5 billion dollars, was arrested on Saturday at Le Bourget airport near Paris, where he was expected for a dinner.
Arriving from Baku, Azerbaijan, he was with a bodyguard and his assistant.
The French justice system accuses him of not taking action against the dissemination of criminal or offending content on the Telegram messaging service.
Something the company, which he founded in 2013 and which has more than 900 million users, refutes.
He is accused of twelve offences relating to organised crime as part of a judicial investigation opened against unknown persons on 8 July and led by specialist investigating judges in Paris, following a preliminary investigation by the cybercrime section of the Paris public prosecutor’s office.
Complicity?
It targets in particular the “refusal to communicate information necessary for interceptions authorized by law”, the complicity in offenses and crimes which are organized on the platform (drug trafficking, child pornography, fraud and money laundering by organized gangs) and “the provision of cryptology services aimed at ensuring confidentiality functions without a proper declaration”.
The investigations are being carried out by the Centre for the Fight against Digital Crime (C3N) and the National Anti-Fraud Office (Onaf).
Mr Durov was held in police custody at ONAF headquarters for almost four days.
On Wednesday afternoon, AFP journalists observed two police cars with tinted windows leaving the Onaf parking lot.
If Mr Durov is charged and his pre-trial detention is requested, a judge of liberties and detention should decide at the end of the day on his incarceration or on the establishment of judicial supervision.
Paper airplanes
His arrest sparked strong reactions around the world.
He has notably received support from the American whistleblower based in Russia, Edward Snowden, and from Elon Musk, the American boss of X.
In Moscow, Deputy Speaker of the Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament), Vladislav Davankov, and members of his liberal New People party placed paper planes in the shape of the Telegram logo in front of the French embassy on Sunday.
“The accusations made are very serious and require equally solid evidence,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, denouncing an “attempt at intimidation.”
President Emmanuel Macron assured on Monday that the arrest of Pavel Durov was “in no way a political decision.”
It is the subject of “a judicial investigation” and France is “committed to freedom of expression and communication”, he stressed.
The online messaging service that Pavel Durov launched in 2013 with his brother Nikolai allows communications that can be end-to-end encrypted.
Its headquarters are in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where Mr Durov took nationality, before also taking French nationality in August 2021 through a procedure on which Paris remained discreet.
Telegram has positioned itself against the grain of American platforms criticized for their commercial exploitation of personal data.
Telegram has thus committed to never revealing information about its users.
“Telegram complies with European laws, including the Digital Services Regulation, its moderation action is in line with the industry standard,” Telegram defended itself on its own channel on Sunday evening, deeming it “absurd to say that a platform or its boss are responsible for the abuses” noted on the platform.