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Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov was placed under formal investigation by a French judge on Wednesday over alleged criminal activity on the messaging app, and barred from leaving France.
Durov is facing preliminary charges as part of an investigation into Dubai-based Telegram’s alleged failure to address criminality on the app, including enabling money laundering, drug trafficking and the distribution of child sexual abuse content, Paris prosecutors said.
One of the charges against Durov alleges “complicity in the administration of an online platform to enable illicit transactions” as part of an organised crime group, the prosecutors added.
Durov has been freed from custody by the French authorities but placed under judicial supervision, and must provide €5mn as a bail deposit, report to police twice a week and not leave French territory.
A Russia-born billionaire who now holds French and Emirati citizenship, Durov was arrested after flying into Le Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday.
He has been questioned by investigators for four days as part of the investigation by the Paris prosecutors.
Another of the preliminary charges against Durov alleges he refused to co-operate with the French authorities’ requests for information about Telegram.
The “near total lack of response” by Telegram to the authorities’ demands is what prompted cyber crime prosecutors in Paris to open their probe, they said in a statement.
“When consulted, other French investigation services and public prosecutors . . . had the same experience,” prosecutor Laure Beccuau said, adding that “partners” in the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Co-operation had also struggled to secure information from Telegram.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An initial probe into Telegram was opened in February, led by the Paris prosecutors and Ofmin, a police agency specialising in preventing crimes against minors.
Cyber crime investigators and customs officials were brought into the probe in July.
Durov’s arrest in France has become a flashpoint for a global debate over the extent to which social media platforms should prioritise free speech over online safety.
Since its launch in 2013, Telegram has grown to have 1bn users, with Durov resisting government interference and calls for stronger moderation of content.
His arrest has also ignited tensions between France and Russia. Moscow has argued the arrest was politically motivated, a claim denied by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that relations between Moscow and Paris were at an all-time low over the move, suggesting Durov had been arrested so that the French authorities could access Telegram’s encryption keys.
France’s justice system has a Chinese wall between the government and investigators, with no mechanism in place to report sensitive probes to officials.
A person close to Macron said the president and his office had no knowledge of the Telegram probe prior to Durov’s arrest.
After his arrest, Telegram said its chief executive had “nothing to hide”, adding that it was “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner was responsible for abuse of that platform”.
Durov was dubbed the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia” after co-founding its most popular social media network, VKontakte.
But he fled the country in 2014 after allegedly refusing to comply with Moscow’s demands for access to certain Ukrainian user data.
He has built ties in France over the past decade and was granted citizenship in 2021.
Macron had lunch with Durov in 2018, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
“Macron meets CEOs and entrepreneurs all the time to discuss business and investment, so it was in that context,” the person said, adding that Macron and Durov had met “one or two times” but not in recent years. The lunch was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
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