PARIS (Reuters) – Pavel Durov, billionaire founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested on the Bourget airport outdoors Paris on Saturday night, TF1 TV and BFM TV mentioned, citing unnamed sources.
Telegram, notably influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the previous Soviet Union, is ranked as one of many main social media platforms after Fb (NASDAQ:), YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat. It goals to hit one billion customers within the subsequent 12 months.
Based mostly in Dubai, Telegram was based by Russian-born Durov. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to adjust to authorities calls for to close down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he offered.
Durov was travelling aboard his non-public jet, TF1 mentioned on its web site, including he had been focused by an arrest warrant in France as a part of a preliminary police investigation.
TF1 and BFM each mentioned the investigation was centered on a scarcity of moderators on Telegram, and that police thought of that this example allowed prison exercise to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
Telegram didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark. The French Inside Ministry and police had no remark.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has turn into the principle supply of unfiltered – and typically graphic and deceptive – content material from each side in regards to the conflict and the politics surrounding the battle.
The app has turn into most well-liked technique of communications for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his officers. The Kremlin and the Russian authorities additionally use it to disseminate their information. It has additionally turn into one of many few locations the place Russians can entry information in regards to the conflict.
TF1 mentioned Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at round 20:00 (18:00 GMT).
Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, mentioned some governments had sought to strain him however the app, which has now 900 million lively customers, ought to stay a “neutral platform” and never a “player in geopolitics”.
Russia’s embassy in France advised the Russian state TASS information company that it was not contacted by Durov’s crew after the reviews of the arrest, however it was taking “immediate” steps to make clear the state of affairs.
Russia’s consultant to worldwide organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and several other different Russian politicians have been fast to accuse France of appearing as a dictatorship.
“Some naive persons still don’t understand that if they play more or less visible role in international information space it is not safe for them to visit countries which move towards much more totalitarian societies,” Ulyanov wrote on X.
A number of Russian bloggers known as for protests at French embassies all through the world at midday on Sunday.