Durov Walks Free But Not Far
Telegram's co-founder has been indicted on all charges brought against him by French authorities and banned from leaving the country.
On Wednesday night, French judicial authorities placed Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov under formal investigation for managing a messaging app that facilitates illicit transactions and communications and failing to cooperate with authorities on criminal investigations.
The Russian-born entrepreneur, who also has French citizenship, was released on a $5 million bail, banned from leaving the country, and forced to report to a police station twice a week.
Charges against Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai Durov were issued on March 25 following an undercover investigation by the Parisian prosecutor's office into the messaging app's conduct.
Durov brothers are accused of managing a platform that allows both the distribution and availability of child pornography content as well as illicit transactions between criminal groups.
The Telegram masterminds have also been charged with failing to assist French authorities in criminal investigations.
The judicial case mentions one specific situation when the messaging app refused to give out information on a known child abuser. According to a document seen exclusively by Politico, authorities from several other European countries have corroborated these charges, saying that the "near total absence of a response" from the app to authorities is frequent.
While it might seem peculiar that an encrypted messaging app can be requested to give information about its users, Telegram's end-to-end encryption is more of a marketing stunt than a technology feature.
Despite knowing he was a wanted man on French soil, the tech tycoon still flew to France on Saturday, having been arrested immediately upon arrival at Paris' Le Bourget airport.
Telegram issued a statement shortly after saying that it is "absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the abuse of that platform" and claiming that its co-founder has nothing to hide.
The odd behavior, coupled with the recent overlapping of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the tech entrepreneur in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku, has led to a spiral of conspiracy theories on Durov's reasons for returning to France.
Also on Wednesday, an exclusive report by Forbes detailed an unrelated ongoing investigation on the 39-year-old Telegram founder for domestic violence in Switzerland.
The case was filed in March 2023 by the CEO's former partner, Irina Bolgar, who accuses Durov of having been physically abusive towards one of the couple's children and also alleges that the billionaire has stopped paying for child support.
The arrest of the tech CEO sparked a massive wave of support from the crypto community since the case echoes those of other freedom-loving tech creators who have been accused of criminal activity by Western liberal governments.
Yet, the support of the crypto community for Durov might now waver because while everybody out there is a lover of freedom, nobody is a fan of child violence.
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