Telegram’s Durov charged in France, banned from leaving country

The tech mogul founded Telegram as he was in the process of quitting his native Russia a decade ago. Its growth has been exponential, with the app now reporting over 900 million users.
Telegram had the weekend insisted that Durov had “nothing to hide” and said it was “absurd” he should be held responsible for inappropriate content.
An enigmatic figure who rarely speaks in public, Durov is a citizen of Russia, France and the United Arab Emirates, where Telegram is based.
Forbes magazine estimates his current fortune at US$15.5 billion, though he proudly promotes the virtues of an ascetic life that includes ice baths and not drinking alcohol or coffee.
Numerous questions have been raised about the timing and circumstances of Durov’s detention, with supporters seeing him as a freedom of speech champion and detractors as a menace who wilfully allowed Telegram to get out of control.
Le Monde newspaper reported Wednesday that Durov had met French President Emmanuel Macron on several occasions prior to receiving French nationality in 2021, via a special procedure reserved for those deemed to have made a special contribution to France.
Durov left Russia a decade ago as he was setting up Telegram amid an ownership squabble concerning his first project, the Russian social network VKontakte.
But his departure from Russia was reportedly not an abrupt exile: According to the Vazhnye Istorii news site, citing leaked border data, he visited the country more than 50 times between 2015 and 2021.
Durov, who has been based in Dubai in recent years, arrived in Paris from the Azerbaijani capital Baku and was planning to have dinner in the French capital, a source close to the case said.
Telegram has positioned itself as a “neutral” alternative to US-owned platforms, which have been criticised for their commercial exploitation of users’ personal data.
It has also played a key role since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, used actively by politicians and commentators on both sides of the war.
The Paris prosecutor said that the French judicial authorities had been made aware of the “near total absence of a response” from Telegram to requests from the authorities and had first opened an investigation in February 2024.