France extends arrest of Telegram chief Durov

French judicial authorities on Sunday extended the detention of Russian-born Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov after he was arrested at a Paris airport for alleged offences related to the popular but controversial messaging app.

His arrest at Le Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday night is the latest extraordinary twist in the career of one of the world’s most influential tech icons.

The detention of Durov, 39, was extended beyond Sunday night by the investigating judge handling the case, a source close to the investigation said. This initial period of detention for questioning could last up to 96 hours.

Once this stage of detention is over, the judge may decide to release the suspect or to press charges and remand him in custody for a longer period.

Russia has accused France of “refusing to cooperate” and fellow tech magnate Elon Musk has come to his defense. Durov holds a French passport, among other nationalities.

Durov had arrived in Paris from Baku, Azerbaijan, and was planning to have dinner in the French capital, a source close to the matter said.

He was accompanied by a bodyguard and a personal assistant who always accompany him, added the source, who asked to remain anonymous.

France’s OFMIN, an agency charged with preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov in a preliminary investigation into alleged crimes including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime and promoting terrorism, another source said.

Durov is accused of failing to take measures to tackle criminal use of his platform.

Telegram responded with the following: “Durov has nothing to hide and regularly travels around Europe.”

“Telegram complies with EU law, including the Digital Services Act — its moderation falls within industry standards,” it added. “It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for abuse of that platform.”

– ‘Attack on fundamental human rights’ –

Durov founded Telegram in 2013 after his first project, the Russian social network VKontakte (VK), ran into ownership issues that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Telegram has become extremely popular, partly because of the ease with which you can watch and post videos to the messaging channels.

However, critics accuse the site of hosting often illegal content, ranging from extreme sexual images and disinformation to drug purchase services.

The Russian embassy in Paris said it had demanded access to Durov but had received no response from France, saying “the French side refuses to cooperate.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow had requested consular access but that since Durov also had French citizenship, “France considers this to be his main nationality.”

Musk, who heads the Tesla car group and the X social media platform, formerly Twitter, posted the hashtag #FreePavel on X and responded in French: “Liberte Liberte! Liberte?” (Freedom Freedom! Freedom?).

US whistleblower Edward Snowden, who sought asylum in Russia, denounced “an assault on the fundamental human rights of expression and association” and said he regretted that Paris had “stooped to the level of taking hostages as a means of gaining access to private communications.”

– ‘Independence, privacy, freedom’ –

A source close to the case expressed surprise that Durov had flown to France with a warrant for his arrest. “Maybe he had a sense of impunity,” the source said.

Le Bourget is now used by private jets rather than regular commercial traffic. It is also famous as the place where Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev fled to the West in 1961.

Telegram, a Dubai-based encrypted messaging app, is positioning itself as an alternative to US platforms, which have been criticized for their commercial exploitation of users’ personal data.

Telegram has promised never to release information about its users.

In a rare interview with right-wing talk show host Tucker Carlson in April, Durov said he came up with the idea to launch an encrypted messaging app after coming under pressure from the Russian government while working at VK.

He said he subsequently tried settling in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before choosing Dubai, which he praised for its business climate and “neutrality”.

People “like the independence. They also like the privacy, the freedom, (there are) many reasons why someone would switch to Telegram,” Durov told Carlson.

He said at the time that the platform had more than 900 million active users.

Being based in the United Arab Emirates allows Telegram to shield itself from moderation laws, while Western countries pressure large platforms to remove illegal content.

Telegram allows groups with up to 200,000 members. There are allegations that this facilitates the spread of false information and the dissemination of neo-Nazi, paedophile, conspiracy and terrorist content.

Rival messaging service WhatsApp imposed global restrictions on message forwarding in 2019 after the company was accused of facilitating the spread of false information in India, leading to lynchings.