Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is forbidden from leaving French territory after being charged for complicity in working a web-based platform that allegedly enabled the unfold of sexual pictures of kids, creating an unsure future for the messaging app that has grow to be one of many world’s greatest social media platforms.
Durov was arrested on Saturday at 8 pm native time after his personal jet landed at an airport close to Paris. He was then detained for 4 days as a part of an investigation into alleged legal exercise going down on Telegram. On Wednesday night, native time, he was indicted and forbidden from leaving the nation, in response to an announcement launched by the Paris Prosecutor. He was launched beneath judicial supervision, the assertion stated, and should publish a €5 million ($5.5 million) bail and report back to a police station in France twice every week.
The Telegram founder was positioned beneath formal investigation for a spread of expenses associated to youngster sexual abuse materials, drug trafficking, importing cryptology with out prior declaration, in addition to a “near-total absence” of cooperation with French authorities, Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, stated on Wednesday.
French authorities famous an “virtually complete lack of response from Telegram to authorized requests,” Beccuau famous. “That is what led JUNALCO [the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime] to open an investigation into the potential legal legal responsibility of this messaging service’s executives within the fee of those offenses,” she stated. The preliminary investigation started in February 2024 and preliminary investigations have been coordinated by the OFMIN, an company set as much as forestall violence in opposition to minors, her assertion added.
“It’s absurd to say {that a} platform or its proprietor is chargeable for the abuse of that platform,” Telegram stated on Sunday, earlier than Durov was charged. The platform, which has 900 million energetic customers, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark to the costs.
Since his arrest, each the UAE and Russia have requested consular entry to Durov, who has citizenship in each international locations. It’s unclear why Durov, who additionally obtained a French passport after leaving Russia, was in France. “I don’t take holidays,” he stated on his Telegram channel in June.
Russia has claimed, with out proof, that Durov’s arrest is an try by america to exert affect over the platform through France. “Telegram is among the few and on the similar time the most important Web platforms over which america has no affect,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s State Duma, the decrease home of parliament, stated on the app.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, stated on Monday that Durov’s detention is “under no circumstances a political resolution.” “It’s as much as the judiciary, in full independence, to implement the legislation,” he added in a publish on X. The European Fee tells WIRED the arrest was performed beneath French legal legislation and isn’t linked to new European regulation for tech platforms. “We’re intently monitoring the developments associated to Telegram and stand able to cooperate with the French authorities ought to it’s related,” a spokesperson says, declining to be named.