Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Arrested Due to 'Lack of Moderation' on Platform

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on Saturday after his private jet landed at Le Bourget Airport, French media reported.

Durov was arrested under a warrant related to “various violations of his encrypted messaging service,” according to a report by Le Monde. The 39-year-old, who became a French citizen in 2021, is expected to be brought to court on Sunday.

French authorities are accusing Durov of a “lack of moderation” involving Telegram. The messaging app is reportedly under attack in Europe for the “viral circulation of false information.”

“Telegram has shielded itself from state moderation rules, at a time when the European Union and the United States are putting pressure on major platforms to remove illegal content,” Le Monde reported.

France’s OFMIN (Office to Combat Violence Against Minors) issued the warrant as part of an investigation into “offenses ranging from fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime, glorification of terrorism, and fraud,” a source told the French newspaper.

“Enough with Telegram’s impunity,” a French investigator said.

Durov, who doesn’t often sit down for interviews, spoke with Tucker Carlson in April, telling the former Fox News host that the Russian government was the first entity to demand that he censor speech — via his other platform, VK — in an effort to quell protests in the country.

“We were requested to ban these [protest organizing] communities — and I refused,” Durov explained. “But that did not go too well with the government.”

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“A few years from then, in 2013, we had a similar situation where you had these protests in Ukraine where people, again, would use VK to organize themselves and go to the main square of the city and show their disagreement with the government,” Durov continued.

“We received a demand from the Russian side, saying, ‘You have to give us the private data of the organizers of this protest,’ and our response was, ‘Wait, a minute, this is a different country, we won’t betray our Ukrainian users because you asked us to.’ We decided to refuse, and that didn’t go too well with the Russian government as well,” he added.

As a result, Durov chose to resign as the CEO of VK.

“I had to make a difficult decision,” he said. “Because I was offered basically a choice between two suboptimal options: one of which was I would start complying with whatever the leaders of the countries tell me to do, and the other one was I could sell my stake in the company, retire, resign as the CEO, and leave the country. I chose the latter.”

Carlson reacted to Durov’s arrest in a Saturday X post, writing, “In the end, it wasn’t Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise free speech. It was a western country, a Biden administration ally and enthusiastic NATO member, that locked him away.”

Pavel Durov left Russia when the government tried to control his social media company, Telegram. But in the end, it wasn’t Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise free speech. It was a western country, a Biden administration ally and enthusiastic NATO member,… https://t.co/F83E9GbNHC

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 24, 2024

“Pavel Durov sits in a French jail tonight, a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies,” Carlson added. “Darkness is descending fast on the formerly free world.”

Elon Musk also reacted to the arrest, calling it an “ad for the First Amendment” that is “very convincing.”