The founder and CEO of messaging service Telegram, Pavel Durov, has for the first time reacted to his indictment for a series of offences related to organised crime. He calls the actions of the French justice system “surprising” and criticizes the “wrong approach” of the authorities.
On August 24, the police arrested the 39-year-old Durov at Paris’ Le Bourget airport. French justice accuses the billionaire of not taking action against the dissemination of criminal and punishable messages via Telegram, which has some 950 million users. He was held in custody for several days and interrogated, after which he was charged and released under strict judicial supervision.
Durov posted a comment on Telegram on Thursday night, the first since his arrest. “After arriving in Paris, I was interrogated by the police for four days last month. I was told that I would be personally responsible for the illegal use of Telegram by others, because the French authorities did not receive any answers from Telegram. This is surprising for several reasons,” the CEO said.
For example, Durov points out that Telegram has an official representative in the European Union who handles requests from authorities and whose contact details are freely available. He also emphasizes that the French authorities had “several ways to reach me for assistance”. For example, he was “a regular guest at the French consulate in Dubai” – Durov has French as well as Russian nationality – where he “personally helped set up a reporting point at Telegram in connection with the threat of terrorism in France”.
Furthermore, Durov questions the fact that the French justice system is targeting him personally. “When a country is unhappy with an internet service, the common practice is to start legal proceedings against the service itself,” he says. “Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to accuse a CEO of crimes by third parties on the platform he manages is the wrong approach.”
Durov acknowledges that striking the right balance between privacy and security is difficult, but says the platform does take action against harmful messages and channels “on a daily basis,” and publishes transparency reports. But at Telegram, “we stand by our principles,” driven by “our mission to protect users from authoritarian regimes.” If regulators disagree with that approach, Telegram is willing to leave the countries in question, the CEO emphasizes. Telegram has already been banned in Russia and Iran for its unwillingness to comply with the authorities.