Pavel Durov, o The 39-year-old billionaire co-founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram appeared before an investigator in a Paris court on Wednesday night after being arrested and questioned by French law enforcement following his arrest last weekend. That judge brought six preliminary criminal charges against Durov for allegedly allowing criminal activity on the app, and the tech executive – who posted €5m bail to avoid jail – is barred from leaving France. He will also remain under court supervision and must check in with the police twice a week.
The charges mentioned in the indictment they include complicity in providing a platform for the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), drug trafficking, fraud and illegal transactions — and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement agencies requesting data and documents as part of criminal investigations. If convicted, he could face 10 years in prisonaccording to Paris prosecutor Laure Beccauau.
The move to hold Durov accountable for cybercrime at Telegram comes as the European Union investigates possible enforcement of Digital Services Actwhich came into effect last year and gives it broader powers to regulate major tech platforms, while setting new standards for privacy and curbing harmful content, including misinformation and hate speech. In one statement On Sunday, Telegram said the company complies with the DSA, that Durov “has nothing to hide” and that “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the abuse of that platform.”
Authorities were able to extend Durov's detention for four days beyond the first 25 hours after his arrest, which took place at Le Bourget airport just outside Paris on Saturday night. (Durov was arriving from Azerbaijan on a private jet.) After that time, they were forced to release him or charge him — the latter at the judge's discretion.
The Russian-born Durov, who recently lived in Dubai as a citizen of both France and the United Arab Emirates, is caught up in what prosecutors describe as a broader investigation into alleged criminal activity at Telegram, which he founded with his brother Nikolai Durov. That undercover operation began months ago, with arrest warrants issued for the brothers in March, according to a French administrative document was viewed by Politico. Police are investigating the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), drug trafficking and organized fraud on the app, which is favored for secret communications due to its end-to-end encryption. French prosecutors also said Telegram was not cooperative in helping the investigation and mitigating harmful content.
Telegram has a complicated reputation. On the one hand, he has proven instrumental in pro-democracy movements in authoritarian countries such as the Durovs' native Russia (Pavel left in 2014 amid pressure to hand over data from anti-Putin commentators on the VK social network and sold the stake of at that company Nikolai and Pavel have each held citizenship in the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis ever since). On the other hand, the app has also been a hotbed for extremist hate groups, illegal drug and firearms trafficking, child exploitation, conspiracy theorists and terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State.
As such, Telegram has been championed by the likes of Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson as a “free speech” platform, even as governments try to rein in criminal activity there. In addition to frustrating law enforcement agencies by failing to comply with subpoenas, the company also ignored requests and warnings from child safety guards concerned by the spread of CSAM in the application. In 2017, the Wall Street Journal was mentioned On Wednesday, spies from France and the United Arab Emirates hacked Durov's iPhone, apparently as part of joint counterterrorism efforts between the two nations.
In an ironic twist, Putin's allies condemned Durov's arrest as an outrageous attack on his civil liberties. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has he said it may amount to “a direct attempt to limit the freedom of communication and, I might even say, to directly intimidate the head of a large company”. French President Emmanuel Macron has he refused that the criminal investigation is politically motivated.
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