He was under threat of a search warrant. Franco-Russian Pavel Durov, head of the Telegram messaging service, was arrested by border police on Saturday, August 24, as he got off the plane at Le Bourget airport (Seine-Saint-Denis), franceinfo learned from a source close to the case, confirming information from TF1-LCI. According to our information, the French justice system accuses the 39-year-old billionaire of not responding to judicial requisitions and of hosting groups carrying out illegal activities on his site.
Together with his brother, he launched the social network VKontakte.
With a fortune of 15.5 billion dollars (13.38 billion euros) according to Forbes, Pavel Durov became known in 2006 when, having just graduated from St. Petersburg University, he and his brother launched Nikolai the social network VKontakte (VK). The latter quickly became the first in Russia, ahead of Facebook, earning its co-founder the nickname “Russian Mark Zuckerberg”.
After attracting 100 million users with VK, Pavel Durov announced his resignation on April 1, 2014, arguing that his freedom of action had been “significantly reduced”. Two days later, he retracted his statement, claiming that the announcement was an April Fool’s joke. But in reality, he was in a heated conflict with the investment fund United Capital Partners (UCP), which held almost half of the capital. UCP accused Pavel Durov of using VK’s resources to create the instant messaging app Telegram in 2013, which was independent of the social network.
The heart of the matter was undoubtedly more political: Pavel Durov had to leave Russia after refusing to hand himself over to the security service (FSB) personal data of Ukrainian pro-European activists. He also reported in April, in a rare video interview with ultraconservative American journalist Tucker Carlson, he had the idea of launching an encrypted messaging service after being pressured by Russian authorities at the time of VK.
He displays libertarian convictions
As explained to franceinfo Nicolas Arpagian, Vice President of HeadMind Partners, a firm specializing in digital risk analysis, Pavel Dourov “has a libertarian conviction”. That is to say that“He considers that the State is problematic, that taxes are suspect, that freedoms must be maximized”. A position which can explain what the French justice system accuses him of, namely “not responding to requests from magistrates, not moderating the remarks [des utilisateurs]“. “He considers that it is not his role, that the control is a priori problematic and that it is not his responsibility to do it”continues Nicolas Arpagian.
“This is both what he is accused of and what attracts all those who do not wish to see their activity regulated: terrorism, pedocriminality, violence…”
Nicolas Arpagian, vice-president of HeadMind Partnersto franceinfo
Pavel Durov, however, assures that he responds to every request to remove content calling for violence or murder. And his platform has regularly collaborated with the judicial authorities: in 2022, threatened with blocking by the Brazilian Supreme Court, Telegram had agreed to close accounts accused of disinformation. The same year, Germany had welcomed the discussions “constructive” with messaging, popular with local far-right or anti-vax activists.
A loner, he boasts of being the biological father of more than 100 children.
Absent from traditional media, Pavel Durov does not hesitate to put himself in the spotlight on his own Telegram page, claiming to lead a solitary life, abstaining from meat and alcohol. Always dressed in black, he cultivates his resemblance to actor Keanu Reeves in the film MatrixIn July, he boasted of being the biological father of more than 100 children thanks to his sperm donations in a dozen countries. “I was just told I have over 100 biological children. How is that possible for a guy who has never been married and prefers to live alone?” he wrote. A “civic duty”according to him, bringing him closer to the pro-natalist movement to which Elon Musk and several tech billionaires adhere.
Pavel Durov said he was considering making his DNA available in open source so that his “biological children can find each other more easily”.
Living in Dubai, he obtained French nationality in 2021
After trying to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco, Pavel Durov finally opted for Dubai, where he praised the business environment and the “neutrality”. In the Gulf emirate, the Telegram application has protected itself from state moderation rules, at a time when the European Union and the United States are putting pressure on major platforms to remove illegal content.
In addition to his many travels, Pavel Durov also collects nationalities. He thus obtained citizenship of the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts and Nevis and then, in August 2021, French nationality thanks to a rare procedure on which Paris remains very discreet.
He made Telegram one of the most used social networks in Russia and Ukraine
Telegram has nearly 900 million users and is expected to hit the billion mark within a year, according to Pavel Durov. People like it “independence, privacy and freedom” of the platform, he told Tucker Carlson in April.
Pavel Durov may have left Russia ten years ago, but his mailbox is still there.one of the most used social networks, with channels that can have several hundred thousand subscribers, such as Rybar. This is also the case on the Ukrainian side with, for example, the DeepState channel, which partly explains Telegram’s success since the war began in 2022.
In 2018, a Russian court’s decision to block Telegram, never fully implemented, was condemned by many international NGOs. “Do you think that this time they will demand Durov’s release, or will they keep quiet?”asked Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharovaon his Telegram page.
He was listed in the French Wanted Persons File
Pavel Durov was the subject of a discreet preliminary investigation conducted by the Office specializing in the fight against violence against minors, under the national direction of the French judicial police, franceinfo learned from a source close to the case. He was thus registered in the Wanted Persons File. UA judicial investigation was then opened by the cyber division of the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime of the Paris prosecutor’s office, according to another source close to the case. The investigations were entrusted to the national cyber unit of the national gendarmerie and to the National Anti-Fraud Office dependent on customs.
It was in this context that he was arrested while he was on French territory, on suspicion of offences ranging from fraud to drug trafficking, from cyberbullying to organised crime and the glorification of terrorism.
His arrest sparked numerous international reactions. “#FreePavel”notably published on X (ex-Twitter) the boss of the platform, Elon Musk, before publishing a new message in French saying “Freedom. Freedom! Freedom?”