New York (CNN) –– The arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France over the weekend put the popular messaging service and its enigmatic founder in the spotlight.
Durov, born in Russia, was arrested this Saturday at Bourget airport in Paris for a warrant related to Telegram’s lack of moderation.
Russia and France, in conflict over the arrest of the founder of Telegram?
Those charges include accusations that his platform was complicit in helping scammers, money launderers, drug traffickers and people who spread child sexual exploitation content, French prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement Monday. Beccuau added that Durov is accused of refusing to communicate “information or documents” related to the investigation.
The app has also recently come under scrutiny for its use by far-right extremist and terrorist groups.
Durov’s arrest sparked a debate about freedom of expression and who is responsible for illegal content on the internet. According to ReutersRussian legislator Maria Butina, who was convicted in the United States on espionage charges and deported to Russia in 2019, said this Sunday that the CEO is a “political prisoner.”
But French President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement published this Monday in X that Durov’s arrest “was in no way a political decision.”
“I am reading false information about France following the arrest of Pavel Durov,” Macron said, adding that the arrest “took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation.”
The Paris Prosecutor’s Office said Monday that Durov’s arrest is part of a broad investigation into a series of criminal activities dating back to July 8 on Telegram, with a total of 12 separate charges.
Telegram has assured that it respects the legislation of the European Union and that Durov “has nothing to hide.”
Here’s what you need to know about Telegram and why it has come under fire.
Telegram is an encrypted messaging service that Durov and his brother Nikolai launched in 2013. The app now has more than 950 million users, according to a post by Durov last monthmaking it one of the most used messaging platforms in the world.
The platform has become a crucial service in many countries and is used for everything from daily chatting and sending photos and documents to broadcasting government messages.
Because conversations on the app are encrypted, authorities (and Telegram itself) have little oversight over what users post.
That privacy made Telegram an important communication tool in countries where freedom of expression is restricted, such as Russia, Iran and India. The app is also popular in Ukraine, where it has become a vital tool for sharing war news and airstrike warnings.
But those same protections also made the service popular with drug traffickers, money launderers and extremists, including white supremacists and terrorist groups like ISIS.
Telegram allows up to 200,000 users to join individual chat groups, where false information can spread quickly. Other encrypted services, like Meta’s WhatsApp, have much smaller limits on group sizes.
In March, Durov he told the Financial Times that the app was “close to profitability” after introducing advertising and subscription offerings two years ago, adding that the company was considering an initial public offering.
Beyond its use by criminals and extremists, Telegram has faced criticism for its role in major conflicts and political events, as well as its refusal to abandon its commitment to encryption.
In 2018Moscow attempted to ban Telegram for refusing to provide Russian security services with decryption keys that would allow state authorities to read private messages. Durov vowed to challenge the ban, which was eventually lifted in 2020.
Telegram became popular among Trump supporters and followers of the Q-Anon conspiracy theory in 2021 after major social media platforms such as Facebook began cracking down on false claims that the US presidential election of 2020 had been fraudulent. This sparked concern from law enforcement officials, who feared that misinformation could lead to more real-world violence.
Last fall, Telegram restricted access to several channels closely associated with or operated by Hamas amid the fighting group’s war with Israel.
And earlier this month, the messaging app began actively removing calls for violence from the platform following reports that the app was being used to organize far-right and anti-immigrant riots in the United Kingdom.
“Telegram moderators are actively monitoring the situation and are removing channels and posts that contain calls for violence,” Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn said in a statement at the time. “Calls to violence are explicitly prohibited by Telegram’s terms of service.”
Telegram moderators proactively monitor public parts of the platform and also rely on artificial intelligence tools and user reports to remove content that violates its rules, Vaughn said.
In its statement on Sunday, Telegram said that “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the abuse (discussed on) that platform.”
Durov, the billionaire founder and CEO of Telegram, was born in the Soviet Union in 1984. He said he showed an aptitude for mathematics and coding from an early age.
In 2006, Durov launched the social network Vkontakte (VK) when he was 21 years old and fresh out of university. As the app grew, he became known colloquially as the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia.”
But when protesters began using VK to organize demonstrations in Kyiv against Ukraine’s former pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2013, Durov said the Kremlin asked the site to hand over private data of Ukrainian users.
Durov refused, resigned as CEO of VK, sold his shares in the company and, in 2014, left Russia. “I don’t want to take orders from anyone,” Durov said of his decision to leave the company and leave his native country.
Durov also launched Telegram in 2013. He now lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and is also a citizen of France.
In addition to managing Telegram, Durov has become something of an online influencer, sharing images on Instagram of his travels around the world (and often shirtless photos). He also claims to have fathered more than 100 children thanks to sperm donations he has made over the past 15 years.
–– Joshua Berlinger, Camille Knight and Anna Chernova contributed to this report.
