PARIS (Reuters) - Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram, is a Russian-French billionaire. He was detained on Saturday night at the Bourget airport outside of Paris, according to TF1 TV and BFM TV, which cited anonymous sources. Durov was traveling in his private jet, according to TF1's website, which also stated that he was the subject of an arrest warrant in France as part of an initial police investigation.
With close to one billion users, Telegram is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union. It is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and Wechat. The French Interior Ministry and police had no comment. TF1 and BFM both said that the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered this situation to allow criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
Durov, a Russian native, and his brother launched Telegram in 2013. After defying orders from the authorities to close down opposition communities on his sold social networking platform VKontakte, he departed Russia in 2014.
When asked in April about his decision to leave Russia and look for a new home for his business, which includes stays in Berlin, London, Singapore, and San Francisco, Durov told American journalist Tucker Carlson, "I would rather be free than to follow instructions from anyone."
Telegram has emerged as the primary platform for uncensored, sometimes explicit, and sometimes inaccurate communication from both sides regarding the war and the politics underlying it, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Telegram, which allows users to elude official scrutiny, has also become one of the few places where Russians can access independent news about the war after the Kremlin increased curbs on independent media following its invasion of Ukraine. The Russian foreign ministry said its embassy in Paris was clarifying the situation around Durov and called on Western non-governmental organizations to demand his release. The platform has become what some analysts refer to as "a virtual battlefield" for the war, heavily used by the Russian government and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his officials as well as the Russian government.
After Telegram disregarded a court order to provide access to its users' encrypted messages to state security services, Russia started blocking the app in 2018.
Numerous third-party services were disrupted by the action, although Telegram's availability was mostly unaffected. NGOs, however, criticized the ban order and there were large-scale protests in Moscow.
'NEUTRAL PLATFORM'
Durov, a resident of Dubai, was detained at about 8:00 p.m. (1800 GMT), according to TF1. He was traveling from Azerbaijan.
Forbes valued Durov's wealth at $15.5 billion. He claimed that despite pressure from some governments, the app should continue to be a "neutral platform" and not a "role in geopolitics."
However, because to security and data breach worries, several European nations, including France, have begun to closely monitor Telegram as its popularity grows.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's envoy to international organizations in Vienna, along with a number of other Russian lawmakers swiftly charged on Sunday that France was functioning as a dictatorship. This accusation is similar to what Moscow received when it attempted to outlaw Telegram in 2018 and placed demands on Durov in 2014.
"There are still some naive people who do not grasp that it is unsafe for them to travel to countries that are moving toward much more dictatorial cultures if they participate in international information space," Ulyanov wrote on X.
"It is 2030 in Europe and you are being executed for liking a meme," tweeted Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, in response to news of Durov's arrest.
On Sunday at noon, a number of Russian bloggers called for protests at French embassies across the globe.
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