Pavel Durov, CEO and co-founder of Telegram, is pictured onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015 on September 21, 2015, in San Francisco.
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Pavel Durov, co-founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging service, was arrested and detained on Saturday, French media reported.
The Paris prosecutor’s office told NPR that a statement on the matter will be released on Monday.
According to multiple French press reports, law enforcement authorities arrested Durov at Le Bourget Airport outside Paris, where he was arriving on a private jet from Azerbaijan.
AFP reported that a warrant for Durov’s arrest was issued following an investigation into whether he failed to crack down on illegal activities including drug trafficking, promoting terrorism and fraud on Telegram.
French newspaper World reported that the investigation is looking into whether Durov refused to cooperate with law enforcement on issues including cyber fraud and the distribution of child pornography on Telegram.
Russian Embassy in France issued a statement said it had asked the French authorities to explain Durov’s detention and asked for his rights to be protected and for consular access to be granted.
Durov, a 39-year-old Russian billionaire, is a citizen of France and the United Arab Emirates, where he runs Telegram, a Dubai-based messaging service with nearly 1 billion users globally.
He is considered the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia” for founding VKontakte, Russian for “contact,” in 2007, a Facebook clone that later became the country’s most popular social network.
In 2013, Durov and his brother Nikolai launched Telegram. Pavel Durov fled Russia a year later after refusing to hand over data on Ukrainian VK users to Russian authorities.
When Telegram first launched, it was quickly embraced by cryptocurrency enthusiasts and the app has become one of the most popular messaging services in the world. It has emerged as a place to go for uncensored updates on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Telegram has a laissez-faire approach to content moderation, which has raised concerns among researchers who have found that misinformation, extremism, and illegal activity, such as drug sales and child pornography, often go uncensored.
Some experts even suspected that Telegram may have links to the Kremlin, which Durov called “incorrect” in an interview in March with Financial TimesThe reclusive CEO spoke to the press for the first time since 2017.
On Durov’s Instagram, he often poses topless, showing off his muscular physique in desert landscapes or posing in an infinity pool.
He is often seen wearing all-black outfits as a clear homage to his character Neo in the film. Matrix.
Content on Telegram spreads across the web when shared on other social networks, where content is often subject to other platforms’ content moderation rules. But Durov has long championed Telegram as a service that can do just about anything, with Durov’s supporters hailing him as a hero of free speech.
