EGN NEWS DESK
The French-Russian billionaire, 39, was detained at Le Bourget airport north of the French capital on Saturday night, one of many officers advised AFP, talking on situation of anonymity.
French tv information shops TF1 TV and BFM TV additionally reported the arrest, citing unnamed sources, in response to Reuters.
He had simply traveled from Baku, Azerbaijan, one other supply near the case advised AFP.
Durov was anticipated to look in courtroom on Sunday.
Manuel Blondeau/AOP.Press/Corbis through Getty Images
France’s OFMIN, an company tasked with stopping violence in opposition to minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov because the coordinating company in a preliminary investigation into alleged offenses together with fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime and promotion of terrorism, one of many sources near the case advised AFP.
Durov is suspected of failing to take motion to curb the prison use of his platform.
“Telegram abides by EU legal guidelines, together with the Digital Services Act,” the corporate stated in an announcement on Sunday, including, “Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to cover and travels incessantly in Europe. It is absurd to assert {that a} platform or its proprietor are answerable for abuse of that platform.”
French Interior Ministry and French police had no remark.
“Enough of Telegram’s impunity,” stated one of many investigators, including they have been stunned Durov got here to Paris understanding he was a needed man.
Durov began Telegram in 2013 and left Russia in 2014 after he was ousted from VKontakte — a well-liked social networking website in Russia that he co-founded — after being pressured by the Kremlin at hand over customers’ private information, which he refused to do.
In a 2016 interview with “60 Minutes,” Durov stated he was “horrified” when he realized that Telegram — which was designed to be closely encrypted in order that governments can not entry customers’ private information — was being utilized by terrorist teams just like the Islamic State to speak.
“I’m personally for the privateness aspect,” Durov stated in that interview when requested whether or not privateness issues outweighed safety dangers. “But one factor that ought to be clear is that you simply can not make only one exception for regulation enforcement with out endangering personal communications of a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of individuals as a result of encryption is both safe or not.”
