<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/telegram" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Telegram</a> founder and CEO Pavel Durov released a statement late this week addressing the numerous criminal charges that he faces in France after he was arrested there last month.
French authorities detained the 39-year-old Russian billionaire late last month when his private jet landed in the country as part of an investigation into alleged offenses stemming from his refusal to cooperate with law enforcement officials investigating crimes occurring on the encrypted communication platform.
Durov said in a statement that the allegations that he was not complying with law enforcement requests were &#8220;surprising&#8221; for multiple reasons, including:
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests. Its email address has been publicly available for anyone in the EU who googles &#8220;Telegram EU address for law enforcement.&#8221;</li>
<li>The French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance. As a French citizen, I was a frequent guest at the French consulate in Dubai. A while ago, when asked, I personally helped them establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France.</li>
<li>If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself. Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a simplistic approach. Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
Durov was charged with complicity in the administration of an online platform that allows organized crime groups to conduct illicit transactions; refusal to cooperate with law enforcement when he is required to by law; complicity in organized fraud, distributing hacking software, child pornography, and illicit drugs; and other crimes.
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He claimed that his company tries to work with governments to strike the right balance between cooperating with law enforcement entities and protecting users&#8217; privacy, but sometimes there are disagreements to the point where Telegram pulls out from a country altogether.
He claimed that authorities were &#8220;confused by where to send requests&#8221; to his company.
&#8220;But the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports. We have direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster.&#8221;
He said that the company&#8217;s rapid growth has made it harder to keep up with clamping down on criminal activity, but vowed that the company was seeking to do better.

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Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Addresses Criminal Charges He Faces In France

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Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was formally <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/crime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">charged</a> in France this week for a wide range of alleged crimes stemming from his refusal to cooperate with law enforcement officials investigating crimes occurring on the encrypted communication platform.
French authorities detained the 39-year-old Russian billionaire over the weekend when his private jet landed in the country as part of an investigation into <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/france-releases-info-on-potential-charges-facing-telegram-ceo-pavel-durov" target="_blank" rel="noopener">12 potential offenses</a>, including refusal to cooperate with law enforcement, complicity in operating an online platform that enables organized crime, and complicity in a wide range of crimes.
Durov was indicted on six charges Wednesday afternoon and was subsequently released from prison after posting a €5 million bail. He is banned from leaving France and must check in at a police station twice a week.
The charges he now faces includes complicity in the administration of an online platform that allows organized crime groups to conduct illicit transactions; refusal to cooperate with law enforcement when he is required to by law; complicity in organized fraud, distributing hacking software, child pornography, and illicit drugs; and other crimes.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said that Telegram had &#8220;an almost complete absence of response&#8221; to official inquires initiated by France&#8217;s judicial system.
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Free speech advocates have voiced their strong opposition to Durov&#8217;s arrest online, warning that other top tech executives could be arrested in the future for similar reasons.
Telegram, which has been around for more than 10 years, has more than 900 million users worldwide and has long been used by criminals and terrorist groups to communicate.
Why France decided to open a criminal investigation into the platform <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/france-charges-telegram-ceo-pavel-durov-released-bail/">several months ago</a>, when it likely could have done so years ago, is unclear.
The Russian military uses Telegram on the battlefield in Ukraine to communicate between soldiers and units, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/world/europe/telegram-russia-ukraine-war.html">The New York Times</a>.
“To date, Telegram has become perhaps the main means of units’ command and control” a pro-war collective of Russian military analysts said on the platform after Durov was arrested, adding that the Russian military now needed to create its own secure channels of communication.

Telegram Chief Executive Officer Pavel Durov

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Charged With Numerous Crimes In France

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Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Addresses Criminal Charges He Faces In France

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Charged With Numerous Crimes In France