PARIS (Reuters) – Pavel Durov, billionaire founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested on the Bourget airport exterior Paris on Saturday night, TF1 TV and BFM TV stated, citing unnamed sources.
Telegram, significantly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the previous Soviet Union, is ranked as one of many main social media platforms after Fb (NASDAQ:), YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat. It goals to hit one billion customers within the subsequent 12 months.
Primarily based in Dubai, Telegram was based by Russian-born Durov. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to adjust to authorities calls for to close down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he bought.
Durov was travelling aboard his non-public jet, TF1 stated on its web site, including he had been focused by an arrest warrant in France as a part of a preliminary police investigation.
TF1 and BFM each stated the investigation was targeted on a scarcity of moderators on Telegram, and that police thought-about that this case allowed legal exercise to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
Telegram didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark. The French Inside Ministry and police had no remark.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has turn into the primary supply of unfiltered – and typically graphic and deceptive – content material from each side in regards to the struggle and the politics surrounding the battle.
The app has turn into most well-liked technique of communications for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his officers. The Kremlin and the Russian authorities additionally use it to disseminate their information. It has additionally turn into one of many few locations the place Russians can entry information in regards to the struggle.
TF1 stated Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at round 20:00 (18:00 GMT).
Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, stated some governments had sought to stress him however the app, which has now 900 million energetic customers, ought to stay a “impartial platform” and never a “participant in geopolitics”.
Russia’s embassy in France informed the Russian state TASS information company that it was not contacted by Durov’s crew after the stories of the arrest, however it was taking “speedy” steps to make clear the state of affairs.
Russia’s consultant to worldwide organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and several other different Russian politicians have been fast to accuse France of appearing as a dictatorship.
“Some naive individuals nonetheless do not perceive that in the event that they play roughly seen function in worldwide data area it isn’t protected for them to go to international locations which transfer in direction of far more totalitarian societies,” Ulyanov wrote on X.
A number of Russian bloggers known as for protests at French embassies all through the world at midday on Sunday.
