Telegram’s CEO arrested as part of cybercrime investigation: Paris

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested on Saturday and is being held in custody as part of a cyber criminality investigation, the Paris prosecutor said in a statement on Monday (August 23).

The probe concerns crimes related to illicit transactions, child pornography, fraud and the refusal to communicate information to authorities, the prosecutor said.

Telegram was founded by Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he has sold.

The encrypted application, with close to 1 billion users, is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union. Durov, who was born in Soviet Leningrad and graduated from St Petersburg State University, lists his political views as “libertarian.”

He obtained his French passport in 2021 through a special procedure for high-profile foreigners exempting them from the usual legal requirements, including having lived in the country for at least five years.

Durov, a 39-year-old billionaire cast as “Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg” has dual French and United Arab Emirates citizenship. Estimated by Forbes to have a fortune of $15.5 billion, Durov said in April some governments had sought to pressure him, but the app should remain a neutral platform and not a “player in geopolitics.”