Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov arrested in France

• French Justice considers that the lack of moderation on the messaging platform

French authorities arrested Pavel Durov, co-founder of Telegram, the Russian-based encrypted instant messaging platform, as he was disembarking from his private plane on the runway at Paris-Le Bourget airport, coming from Azerbaijan, according to local media reports.

The 39-year-old Franco-Russian billionaire, who was arrested on Saturday evening, August 24 by the Gendarmerie de Transports Aéroports, had a French arrest warrant issued by the Office for Minors (Ofmin) of the National Directorate of Criminal Investigation on the basis of a preliminary investigation.

French courts say Telegram’s lack of moderation and Pavel Durov’s failure to cooperate with authorities, along with the platform’s tools such as disposable numbers and encryption, make him complicit in crimes such as drug trafficking, paedophilia and fraud.

The Telegram co-founder is expected to appear before an investigating judge in the coming hours where he could face charges including terrorism, drug trafficking, complicity, fraud, money laundering and distribution of pedophile content, among other charges, according to French media reports.

What is Telegram?

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Telegram is an instant messaging application for electronic devices launched in 2013 by Durov and his brother Nikolai as an alternative to the WhatsApp application.

Based in Dubai and translated into more than 20 languages, Telegram is characterized by its permanent cloud synchronization, something that WhatsApp does not have, so that its users can access messages from different devices at the same time, including tablets and computers, and share an unlimited number of photos, videos and files (doc, zip, mp3, etc.) of up to 2 GB each.

But the platform also offers the creation of bots (automatic messages), the implementation of secret chats that protect users’ privacy with exclusive encryption between the sender and the receiver and the limitation of up to 200,000 people per group.

Given all of this – its encryption, the large size of groups and the ability to share files of any type or size – it is no wonder that the platform has become something unique but also an attractive tool for criminals and extremists.

In fact, Telegram has been removed from app stores or judicially blocked on several occasions for allowing the exchange of illegal content, and in the case of authoritarian regimes, for encouraging protests by opponents.

With information from EFE

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