2024-08-28 04:00:00
It’s hard to be more libertarian than Pavel Durov. The founder of Telegram presents himself as an anti-system activist, refuses all forms of censorship, and does not hesitate to give of himself to defend his ideals. This stance has propelled him to the rank of symbol of defenders of online freedoms, following multiple oppositions to the control of the Russian state apparatus. But this same stance also led to his arrest Saturday evening, as he got off his private jet at Le Bourget airport.
The French police are accusing the leader of not moderating his social network, which has been used in cases of terrorism, crime and even pedophilia. the list Of the twelve charges brought against Pavel Durov, the word “complicity” comes up six times. The 39-year-old billionaire puts freedom before everything else and believes that it is not the role of a social network like his to sort between good and bad, legal and illegal.
Arm wrestling with Russia
Pavel Durov is being prosecuted in other countries for similar acts, but the axe had not yet fallen. The French police therefore made a strong decision by taking action. All the more so since the indictment comes at a time when Telegram is at the center of two tense cases.
On the one hand, the application has established itself as the main source of information for both sides in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. On the other hand, it is one of the messaging services that allows end-to-end encryption (along with WhatsApp and Signal in particular), a mechanism for protecting conversations that has been called into question for years by the European Union, with the support of France, under the pretext of fighting crime. As proof of the turmoil caused by the arrest, President Emmanuel Macron felt compelled to specify himself that it was not a ” political decision ».
To understand the fame of Pavel Durov, what The World nicknamed the “ Robin Hood of the Russian Web “, we have to go back to 2017. The FSB, one of the Russian intelligence agencies, heir to the KGB, demanded that he hand over the keys to decrypt Telegram messages.
These small computer programs would have allowed the government to spy on all conversations in the messaging service, except those protected by end-to-end encryption. The government was obviously targeting discussions with opponents of the regime. This was not the first time that Durov had found himself in a similar situation. In 2013, he opposed the closure of the page of the opponent Alexei Navalny on VKontakte, his first social network. An episode that led to the forced resale of his shares to a group close to the government, following several pressure maneuvers.
For over a year, the leader opposed these new demands head-on. Until the day when, in a now famous snub, he attached two large metal keys, obviously useless, to a refusal letter addressed to the director of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov. Enough to further strengthen his legend. Six days later, on April 16, 2018, the Russian regulator, the RKN, carried out its threats and ordered the blocking of Telegram. Thus began an episode of the Internet commonly known as ” The Battle for Telegram “, studied by researchers.
For two years, the government tried with heavy-handed means – including blocking 15 million IP addresses – to prevent access to the social network. Russian users, meanwhile, tried to circumvent censorship by all means, with success. In 2020, the government finally resigned itself to lifting the ban on Telegram, and the company made its triumphant return to the market.
But this decision disappointed a number of Pavel Durov’s supporters, who thought he was opposed to the government. Except that in reality, the billionaire is not really taking sides. His libertarian position has played into the hands of those who oppose Putin’s power, without being a support.
And « Zuckerberg russe » to the 100 children
To learn a little more about the personality of the businessman who is stingy with media appearances, you have to turn to his social networks. Pavel Durov’s Instagram page could be that of any Silicon Valley guru. He appears shirtless, muscles bulging, in heavenly landscapes.
He peppers his photos with quotes and vague life lessons, like, ” lSelf-discipline is the key to health, wealth and joy “When he does dress, it is only in black, to cultivate a resemblance to the actor Keanu Reeves. Pavel Durov is said to have few friends, and rarely goes out without a bodyguard.
On Telegram, the thirty-year-old is slightly more talkative, but confirms his proximity to the ideals of American tech billionaires. In July, for example, he boasted of being the biological father of more than 100 children, after fifteen years of sperm donations in a dozen countries. A ” civic duty ” for him, which echoes the pro-natalist discourse promoted by other tech figures like Elon Musk, worried about an economic collapse. The founder of Telegram even plans to make his DNA public, so that his children can find each other. To complete this “tech bro” profile, Pavel Durov has also launched his own cryptocurrency, Toncoin, whose price plunged by more than 20% following his arrest.
Even before this transformation, the Western press has long presented Pavel Durov as the ” Zuckerberg russe ” The comparison was obvious in the 2000s, since its first social network, VKontakte, created in 2006, strongly resembled Facebook, launched two years earlier. Mark Zuckerberg had launched his first site on the Harvard campus, Pavel Durov on that of the University of Saint Petersburg.
But where Zuckerberg is a solitary figure, a stereotypical geek, Pavel Durov relies on Nikolai, his older brother by four years. Described as a math genius, he is behind Telegram’s encryption method, a key element of the messaging service’s differentiation strategy. Pavel is a man of letters, even if he learned the basics of computer code as a teenager.
Telegram worried about its leader
Near Wired, Several people close to the leader are worried about the damage that a prolonged absence could cause. While it claims to have more than 950 million regular users, Telegram relies on a team of only about sixty employees, half of whom are developers. In this tight-knit organization, Durov stands out as a central figure, both in strategic decisions and in certain administrative tasks. While the company is obviously not at risk of collapsing in a few days, the concern is quite different at the idea of a prolonged arrest.
The entrepreneur must be physically present for certain payments to service providers who provide the network infrastructure. Telegram will have to find a third-party solution if its leader stays away from business. In the meantime, Pavel Durov may not be released from his interrogation until Wednesday evening, August 28, 96 hours after he began his police custody. His judicial future remains unclear.
In any case, the businessman should remain out of reach of the Putin regime. Since 2014 and his exclusion from VKontakte, Pavel Durov has kept his distance from Russia, although he allows himself visits to St. Petersburg. He first obtained the citizenship of St. Kitts and Nevis, a Caribbean tax haven, in exchange for a donation of 250.000 dollars to the local sugar industry. Then in 2017 he set up Telegram’s headquarters in Dubai, where he himself obtained Emirati citizenship.
But ironically, it was as a French citizen that Pavel Durov was arrested. Since August 2021, he has in fact held a French passport, obtained under conditions that remain mysterious today. In 2023, The Worldwho had looked into the case in depth, had concluded that he could only have gone through a very rare and discreet procedure, that of the “emeritus foreigner”, at the initiative of the French government. But the French State has never commented on this express naturalization, which would today prevent extradition requests if Pavel Durov were imprisoned.
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