Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest was extended by a French court on Sunday, allowing him to remain in custody for a further 96 hours, after which a new court decision will be needed to keep him in custody.
The 39-year-old CEO was arrested on Saturday at an airport near Paris, saying Telegram provided a haven for fraud, drug trafficking, other organized crime, terrorist communications, and child pornography, among other things — despite similar phenomena being found on other social networking sites and Western authorities able to more easily put pressure on Meta, registered in the U.S., than Telegram, registered in the UAE.
The arrest of Durov has sparked mass outrage across social media, with numerous politicians, activists, and academics warning of a grave threat to freedom of speech.
According to claims, Telegram has also played an important role in spreading “fake news” about the Russian-Ukrainian war, and even served as a tool of communication for Russian troops on the frontline. The service also offers end-to-end encrypted chat, which in theory means that the company itself is unable to monitor conversations, but the company’s algorithm is not open-source, unlike Signal. Services such as WhatsApp, owned by Meta, allegedly had a backdoor in them and could still feature security vulnerabilities that the public is not aware of.
The accusations against Durov allege that Telegram has not done enough to combat crime on the platform, but the company said in a statement on Sunday evening that the founder has nothing to hide, as he is complying with European Union laws, including the Digital Services Regulation (DSA). They say it is absurd to hold a platform or its owner liable for the behavior of those who abuse the platform.
The Russian authorities accuse France of failing to cooperate in the case of Durov, a Russian national who now holds French and UAE citizenship. The CEO is known as the founder of VKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook, but was forced to leave the site after refusing to censor Russian opposition groups. He then founded Telegram with his brother Nikolai in 2013, which started out as a simple chat app but now allows groups of up to 200,000 people to be created, while Telegram channels, which can gather followers, are similar to X.
Durov left Russia in 2014 and has since been living in voluntary exile.
