Pavel Durov, the billionaire behind Telegram, just got himself arrested in France. This went down on Saturday night at Bourget airport, right outside of Paris.
Apparently, he’s been on France’s radar for a while. There was an arrest warrant out for him, linked to a French police investigation.
Why? They claim Telegram lacks enough moderators, and they think this has allowed all sorts of illegal stuff to go down on the app.
In 2014, Pavel left Russia after refusing to shut down some opposition groups on his old social media platform, VK, and he’s been in Dubai ever since, running Telegram, which now has 900 million active users.
He has said a few times that some governments have tried to push him around, but he wants Telegram to stay “neutral” and not get caught up in the geopolitical games.
In places like Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet countries, it’s become a go-to for everyone who wants to stay connected. Pavel wants Telegram to hit 1 billion users by next year.
But with growth comes scrutiny, and that’s where the French cops come in.
The whole beef here is about moderation. French authorities think Telegram is just too loose with it. No surprise there, right?
They argue that because the app doesn’t have enough moderators keeping an eye on things, all kinds of sketchy activities—like drug trafficking and other crimes—have found a cozy home there.
Russian officials, meanwhile, are pissed. The Russian embassy in France was quick to jump in, saying they hadn’t heard a peep from Pavel’s side after the news broke. But they’re taking “immediate” steps to get to the bottom of this situation.
Pavle has a long history of butting heads with governments, especially over issues like digital privacy and freedom of speech. This is the guy who tried to launch the TON (Telegram Open Network) project back in 2018, raising $1.7 billion to create the Gram cryptocurrency.
That venture was supposed to be a game-changer in the crypto industry, but it hit a wall when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) came down hard, citing regulatory concerns and effectively shutting the project down.