Telegram founder Pavel Durov (8th place in the Forbes ranking of the richest Russians, with a fortune of $15.5 billion) said that he became the father of more than 100 children thanks to sperm donation. The message about this published on the billionaire’s Telegram channel.
According to Durov, 15 years ago, one of his friends told him that he and his wife were unable to have children due to fertility problems and asked him to donate sperm at a clinic. “The head of the clinic told me that ‘high-quality donor material’ was in short supply and that it was my civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples,” the businessman said.
He added that by 2024, his donor material had helped more than 100 couples in 12 countries become parents. According to Durov, his frozen sperm is still available for use at the AltraVita clinic in Moscow.
“Now I plan to make my DNA available so that my biological children can find each other more easily. Of course, there is a risk, but I do not regret becoming a donor. The lack of healthy sperm is becoming an increasingly serious problem around the world, and I am proud to have contributed to its solution,” the billionaire said.
He also said he wanted to destigmatize sperm donation and encourage more healthy men to become donors “so that families trying to have children have more options.”
Durov spoke about his biological children after lawyer Irina Bolgar told Forbes that she is the mother of the billionaire’s children. She specified that she met the founder of Telegram in St. Petersburg, they had a civil marriage, in which three children were born – Leah, Daniel and David. According to Bolgar, she decided to come out of the shadows for the sake of her children: they are growing up in the modern world and see information about their father, but there is no information about them. Durov, as she assures, recognized her sons and daughter, and they bear his last name. The billionaire himself has not said anything about his family and children.
Forbes previously reported that Durov has two children from his ex-wife Daria Bondarenko, whom the businessman met at St. Petersburg State University, where he studied at the Faculty of Philology. The information was confirmed by a classmate of Durov and Bondarenko, who now lives in Barcelona, in a documentary by Rodion Chepel, released in April 2021. According to Forbes, Durov and Bondarenko’s children are named Mikhail and Alina.
