Telegram CEO Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, was taken into custody by French authorities at an airport located to the north of Paris. According to French media, Mr. Durov was taken into custody following his private jet's landing at Le Bourget Airport.
Officials claim that the 39-year-old billionaire was taken into custody on a warrant for offenses involving the well-known chat app. According to reports, Mr. Durov is being investigated for allegedly not moderating his Telegram account and for not taking action to stop illegal usage of the messaging app.
The app is accused of fraud, child sex content, and drug trafficking, as well as of not assisting law enforcement in these matters. In the past, Telegram has refuted claims of inadequate moderation.
Born in Russia, Pavel Durov currently resides in Dubai, the home of Telegram. He is a dual citizen of France and the United Arab Emirates. In particular, Telegram is well-liked in the former Soviet Union states of Russia and Ukraine. 2018 saw the app banned in Russia due to the developer's prior refusal to provide user data. The prohibition was lifted in 2021.
One of the most popular social media networks, following Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and Wechat, is Telegram. In 2013, Mr. Durov launched Telegram. After defying orders from the authorities to close down opposition communities on his sold social networking platform VKontakte, he departed Russia in 2014.
Seeking to "clarify the reasons for the detention and to provide for the protection of Mr. Durov’s rights and facilitate consular access," the Russian Embassy in France posted a message on Facebook on Sunday.
The post went on to say that French authorities had not been assisting Russian authorities.
Speaking on Telegram, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova questioned whether Western human rights organizations would remain silent about Mr. Durov's detention following their criticism of Russia for attempting to “create obstacles” to Telegram's operations in the country in 2018.
The businessman's arrest was denounced by a number of Russian politicians, who claimed that it demonstrated the West's hypocrisy towards democracy and free speech.
Living in exile in Russia since 2013, American whistleblower Edward Snowden stated on X that Mr. Durov's detention "was an assault on the basic human rights of speech and association."
Elon Musk, the owner of X, has frequently blogged on the problem despite drawing a lot of criticism for the moderation and content his own social media platform hosts.
He added, "POV [Point of view]: It's 2030 in Europe and you're being executed for liking a meme," in one post and included the hashtag #freepavel in another. Telegram's 200,000 member cap has drawn criticism for facilitating the dissemination of false information and allowing users to communicate content pertaining to conspiracies, neo-Nazism, paedophilia, and terrorism.
The app was investigated in the UK for carrying far-right channels that helped plan the violent disturbances that occurred in English cities earlier this month. Although some groups were removed from Telegram, cybersecurity experts claim that overall, the company's approach for filtering extremist and illegal information is far less effective than those of other social media platforms and messaging applications.
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