sensational backstory. The role of the 007s in Paris –

The detention of Telegram founder and head Pavel Durov has been extended by 48 hours by French magistrates. He has been under interrogation in the last few hours. So yesterday the second decision of the magistrates arrived on the judicial case involving the Russian IT guru (whose detention had already been extended last Sunday). The man was arrested last Saturday evening at Le Bourget airport, near Paris, just after getting off his private jet. The magistrates from across the Alps are accusing him of 12 crimes, including complicity with organized crime, dissemination of child pornography and drug trafficking. In particular, the failure to collaborate in combating these criminal hypotheses, committed by the magistrates on his platform. According to the prosecution, Durov refused to provide the authorities with the requested data or documents necessary to conduct and use the wiretaps authorized by law.

However, the Russians accuse the West, and France in particular through the powerful Foreign Minister Lavrov, of wanting to get their hands on Telegram’s cryptographic code to steal secrets and data. Behind the scenes reports citing Western secret services, however, explain that Durov may have gone to France – where there was an active arrest warrant – precisely to be stopped and escape Vladimir Putin’s imminent revenge for not sharing information about the app with Russia.

Today, the Wall Street Journal published a behind-the-scenes story on Paris’ role in this game. In 2018, the newspaper wrote, there was supposedly a lunch between Emmanuel Macron and Durov in which the French president supposedly invited the founder of Telegram to “move” the platform’s headquarters to Paris. The WSJ, which cites informed sources, explains that Durov refused at the time. And, according to the newspaper’s sources, the previous year Durov’s iPhone was targeted by French agents as part of a joint operation with the United Arab Emirates, codenamed ‘Purple Music’. His phone was allegedly hacked. The fear of French security was the use of Telegram by the self-styled Islamic State to recruit jihadists and plan attacks. In 2021, France and the Emirates then granted citizenship to Durov.