Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s various citizenships add to the mystery of his detention
The Hindu
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov's mysterious detention in France linked to multiple citizenships and controversial app usage.
Over more than a decade, the founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram has amassed various different citizenships, something that's only added to the mystery surrounding his detention in France.
Those passports provided Pavel Durov protection after he created and ran Telegram as a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist. The app has been used by some to plan protests in repressive governments like in Iran and his native Russia. However, Western governments allege Telegram aided the work of drug traffickers, money launderers, militant groups and child pornographers.
"To be truly free, you should be ready to risk everything for freedom," Durov once wrote on Instagram, interspersed between images of himself shirtless with the skyscrapers of Dubai or the ruins of Mada'in Saleh in Saudi Arabia behind him.
That risk now appears to have caught up with him, despite passports from Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, and his wealth, estimated by Forbes to be $15.5 billion.
Durov was detained on Saturday at Le Bourget airport outside Paris as part of a sweeping judicial inquiry opened last month, and released earlier on Wednesday (August 28, 2024) after four days of questioning. Investigative judges filed the preliminary charges Wednesday night and ordered him to pay 5 million euros bail and to report to a police station twice a week.
Allegations against Durov include that his platform is being used for child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, and that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.
Durov, 39, apparently began seeking other citizenships more than a decade ago. The impetus came, according to him, from a dispute over control of VKontakte, “In Contact,” known as VK, a social media website that at the time outpaced Facebook in Russia.
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