Paris, France: Telegram chief executive officer, Pavel Durov, was arrested by French police at Le Bourget airport near Paris for failing to take action to curb criminal use of the messaging platform. He is likely to appear in court on Sunday, according to AFP.
Durov was arrested on Saturday evening as he arrived from Baku, in Azerbaijan. An arrest warrant against him was issued by France’s OFMIN, an office tasked with preventing violence against minors, in a preliminary probe into alleged offences including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime and promotion of terrorism.
“Enough of Telegram’s impunity,” said one of the investigators, as quoted by NDTV. The investigators were apparently surprised that Durov came to Paris despite knowing the fact that he was a wanted man.
How was Telegram born?
The encrypted messaging app, based in Dubai, Telegram, is an alternative to US-owned platforms. Bu, it has been criticised for the commercial exploitation of users’ personal data. However, Telegram had declined disclosing any information about its users.
In a interview given to talk show host Tucker Carlson in April, Durov had said he got the idea to launch an encrypted messaging app after coming under pressure from the Russian government. He left Russia in 2014 and tried to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before choosing Dubai for its business environment and ‘neutrality.’
People ‘love the independence. They also love the privacy, the freedom, (there are) a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram,’ Durov told Carlson, as quoted by NDTV.
🚨THEY’RE TRYING TO SILENCE US.
First it was TikTok, now it’s Telegram.#FREEDUROV pic.twitter.com/VB0U4n70v3
— Kyle Chassé (@kyle_chasse) August 25, 2024
What are the allegations against Telegram?
As the platform is based in the United Arab Emirates, it has been able to shield itself from moderation laws. But several western countries had been pressuring large platforms to remove illegal content.
Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members. This has led to allegations that it makes it easier for false information go vitral. The platform has been accused of being an easy platform for users to disseminate neo-Nazi, paedophilic, conspiratorial and terrorist content. However, its competitor messaging service, WhatsApp, had introduced worldwide limits on message forwarding in 2019. Meanwhile Elon Musk has come out in support of the Telegram chief.
#FreePavel
pic.twitter.com/B7AcJWswMs— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2024
