Telegram CEO Pavel Durov says charges against France are ‘misplaced’

Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday, February 23, 2016.

Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The head of messaging platform Telegram said Thursday night that the charges against him by France were “misplaced,” in his first public comments since being detained in the country nearly two weeks ago.

Pavel Durov, who founded Telegram in 2013, was charged last week with facilitating criminal activity on the messaging app, including distributing child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud, and refusing to share information with authorities.

One of the charges — complicity in operating an online platform to facilitate an illegal transaction in an organized gang — carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros ($555,833) if found guilty after trial.

Durov, who has been in France since his arrest on August 24, has posted a €5 million bail and remains under judicial supervision. He is not allowed to leave French territory and must report to a police station twice a week, prosecutors said last week.

In his first public comments on the situation, Durov said on Thursday that France’s decision to detain and charge him was based on a “misleading approach.”

“If a country is dissatisfied with an internet service, it is common practice to take legal action against the service itself,” the CEO and founder of Telegram said in a statement on his Telegram account.

“It is a misguided approach to use pre-smartphone era laws to prosecute a CEO for crimes committed by third parties on the platform he controls.”

“Building technology is hard enough. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be held personally responsible for any misuse of those tools,” he added.

Durov said he was interrogated by French police for four days after arriving in Paris last month from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.

“I have been told that I may be personally responsible for the illegal use of Telegram by others, as the French authorities have not received any response from Telegram,” he said, adding that this was “surprising” given that Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and responds to requests.

The social media platform has already worked with French authorities to “set up a hotline with Telegram to address the threat of terrorism in France,” its founder said. Durov, a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, added that he was a “frequent guest at the French consulate in Dubai.”

Before Durov arrived in France, there was speculation that he would meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Azerbaijan.

The Kremlin’s official spokesman told the BBC last week that no meeting ever took place.

Analyst says other social media apps may also face Telegram allegations

According to Forbes, the 39-year-old Russian-born billionaire has a net worth of approximately $15.5 billion, making him the 121st richest person in the world.

Telegram, the platform he co-founded, is often marketed as an uncensored and neutral platform.

But this approach has led to controversy surrounding the app, with many governments raising concerns That Telegram does not have sufficient controls to detect and remove illegal content.

Telegram is particularly popular in repressive regimes where the use of internet platforms is heavily restricted. It has also gained a reputation for use by fraud gangs, drug dealers and even designated terrorist organizations, who have previously used the service to claim responsibility for attacks.

Telegram defended its moderation practices, saying last week that they “fall within industry standards and are continuously improving.”

Thank you all for your support and love!

Last month, I was questioned by the police for 4 days after arriving in Paris. I was told that I could be personally responsible for the illegal use of Telegram by others, because the French authorities did not receive any responses from Telegram. This was surprising for several reasons:

Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and responds to EU requests. The email address is publicly available to anyone in the EU who googles “Telegram EU address for law enforcement.”
The French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to ask for help. As a French citizen, I was a frequent guest at the French Consulate in Dubai. Some time ago, I personally helped them set up a hotline with Telegram to address the threat of terrorism in France, when they asked for it.
When a country is unhappy with an internet service, it is common to take legal action against the service itself. Using pre-smartphone laws to sue a CEO for crimes committed by third parties on the platform he controls is a misguided approach. Building technology is hard enough. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be held personally responsible for any misuse of those tools.

Finding the right balance between privacy and security is not easy. You have to reconcile privacy laws with law enforcement requirements, and local laws with EU laws. You have to take technological limitations into account. As a platform, you want your processes to be consistent globally, but also not abused in countries with weak rule of law. We have committed to engaging with regulators to find the right balance. Yes, we stand by our principles: our experience is shaped by our mission to protect our users in authoritarian regimes. But we have always been open to dialogue.

Sometimes we can’t agree with a country’s regulator on the right balance between privacy and security. In those cases, we’re willing to leave that country. We’ve done that many times. When Russia demanded that we hand over “encryption keys” to enable surveillance, we refused — and Telegram was banned in Russia. When Iran demanded that we block channels of peaceful protesters, we refused — and Telegram was banned in Iran. We’re willing to leave markets that are incompatible with our principles, because we’re not in this for money. We’re driven by the intent to do good and defend people’s basic rights, especially where those rights are being violated.

None of this means that Telegram is perfect. Even the fact that authorities can get confused about where to send requests is something we need to improve. But the claims in some media that Telegram is some kind of anarchist paradise are absolutely false. We remove millions of malicious posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports (like this one or this one ). We have direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster.

However, we hear voices saying that it’s not enough. Telegram’s abrupt increase to 950 million users caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform. That’s why I’ve made it my personal goal to make sure we significantly improve things in this area. We’ve already started that process internally, and I’ll share more details about our progress with you soon.

I hope the events of August will help Telegram — and the social networking industry as a whole — become safer and stronger. Thanks again for your love and memes