Telegram’s billionaire founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested on Saturday, August 25, at the Bourget airport outside Paris, TF! TV and BFM TV reported citing sources.
Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, according to TF1’s website, which added that he is the subject of an arrest warrant in France related to an ongoing preliminary police investigation.
TF1 and BFM reported that the investigation centers on the lack of moderators on Telegram, with police believing that this has enabled criminal activity to persist unchecked on the messaging platform.
As per TF1, Durov was travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 8 pm.
Russia’s embassy in France is taking “immediate” measures to clarify the situation, according to the state news agency TASS. They added that they had not been contacted by his team.
Durov was born in Russia but left the country in 2014 after refusing to comply with the government’s demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform. He later sold the platform.
Telegram is especially popular in Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet states. The app was banned in Russia in 2018 after Mr. Durov refused to hand over user data, but the ban was lifted in 2021.
The messaging app is ranked among the leading social media platforms, following Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and WeChat.