PARIS — Pavel Durov, the Russian-French billionaire and founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram, was arrested on Saturday evening at Bourget airport outside Paris, TF1 and BFM television reported, citing anonymous sources.
TF1 reported on its website that Durov was traveling on a private jet and that an arrest warrant had been issued in France as part of a preliminary police investigation.
Both TF1 and BFM said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators at Telegram, a situation that police believe could allow criminal activity to continue unchecked on the messaging app.
Durov could be arraigned as soon as Sunday, according to French media.
The encrypted Telegram has around 1 billion users and is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet republics. It ranks as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, while the French interior ministry and police had no comment.
Russia-born Durov co-founded Telegram with his brother in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 and sold VKontakte, the social media platform he ran, after the company refused to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on the platform.
“I'd rather be free than follow someone else's orders,” Durov told American journalist Tucker Carlson in April about leaving Russia and looking to base his company in Berlin, London, Singapore or San Francisco.
Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has become a primary source of unfiltered, sometimes graphic and misleading content from both sides about the war and the politics surrounding the conflict.
The platform has become what some analysts call a “virtual battlefield” for the war and is frequently used by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government officials, as well as the Russian government.
Telegram allows users to evade official scrutiny and has also become one of the few places Russians can access independent news about the war after the Kremlin tightened restrictions on independent media after the invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the Russian embassy in Paris was clarifying the situation surrounding Durov and called on Western non-governmental organizations to call for his release.
Russia began blocking Telegram in 2018 after the platform refused to comply with a court order to allow national security agencies access to users' encrypted messages.
The move disrupted many third-party services but had little impact on Telegram's use, but the ban sparked large-scale protests in Moscow and drew criticism from NGOs.
“Neutral platform”
TF1 reported that Durov, who lives in Dubai, was travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 8pm (1800 GMT).
Durov, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $15.5 billion, said the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not be a “geopolitical actor”, despite pressure from some governments.
But Telegram's growing popularity has drawn scrutiny from several European countries, including France, over security and data leak concerns.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's representative to international organizations in Vienna, and several other Russian politicians on Sunday accused France of acting as an authoritarian state – the same criticism Moscow faced when it made demands on Durov in 2014 and tried to ban Telegram in 2018.
“Some naive people still do not understand that it is not safe to visit a country that is moving towards a more totalitarian society if it plays a more or less prominent role in the international information space,” Ulyanov wrote to X.
“I can't believe in Europe in 2030 you can be executed for liking a meme,” Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, said in response to news of Durov's detention.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who on Friday dropped his bid for the US presidency and endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump, told The X Show in response to the reports that the need to protect free speech “has never been more urgent.”
Several Russian bloggers called for protests at French embassies around the world at midday on Sunday.