French prosecutors on Wednesday formally charged CEO Pavel Durov with facilitating a litany of legal exercise on the favored messaging platform and positioned him beneath formal investigation following his arrest Saturday.
Russian-born Durov, who can also be a French citizen, has been charged with being complicit within the unfold of kid sexual abuse materials (CSAM) in addition to enabling organized crime, illicit transactions, drug trafficking, and fraud.
Durov has additionally been charged with a “refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law,” in line with an English translation of the press launch.
The 39-year-old was detained at Le Bourget airport north of Paris at 8 p.m. native time on Saturday after disembarking from a personal jet. To keep away from pretrial detention, Durov has been ordered to pay a €5 million bail, however he’s barred from leaving the nation and should report back to the authorities twice per week.
The arrest is in reference to a judicial investigation into an unnamed person who was opened in France on July 8, 2024, primarily pushed by Telegram’s lax moderation insurance policies which have allowed extremist and malicious exercise to thrive on the platform. A preliminary probe is alleged to have commenced in February 2024.
“The almost total lack of response from Telegram to judicial requisitions was brought to the attention of the cybercrime fighting section (J3) of JUNALCO (National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime, within the Paris prosecutor’s office), in particular by OFMIN (National Office for Minors),” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau mentioned.
“When consulted, other French investigative services and public prosecutors as well as various partners within Eurojust, particularly Belgian ones, shared the same observation. This is what led JUNALCO to open an investigation into the possible criminal liability of the managers of this messaging service in the commission of these offenses.”
Different costs towards Durov embody –
- Provide of cryptographic providers designed to make sure confidentiality and not using a declaration of conformity
- Provide and import of a cryptographic means that doesn’t completely guarantee authentication or integrity management features with out prior declaration
The event marks one of many uncommon cases the place an organization’s prime government has been held responsible for what customers’ put up on a serious platform that has greater than 950 million month-to-month lively customers. Durove was beforehand the CEO of the Russian social media platform Vkontakte which he had based in 2006. Telegram was subsequently launched in 2013.
Following Durov’s arrest, Telegram mentioned in an announcement on X that he has “nothing to hide,” including “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.” The corporate additionally claims it usually publishes stories of 1000’s of teams and channels associated to baby abuse being banned on the messaging service.
It is also value noting that the positioning’s phrases of service particularly state that it doesn’t course of any requests associated to unlawful content material shared on Telegram chats and group chats.
Politico has since reported that French authorities issued arrest warrants for Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and his co-founder brother Nikolai in March 2024. French President Emmanuel Macron mentioned Monday that Durov’s arrest wasn’t a political choice however a part of an unbiased investigation.
The Wall Avenue Journal additional revealed Wednesday that Durov’s iPhone was hacked by French spies in a joint operation with the United Arab Emirates in 2017 as a part of a beforehand unknown operation codenamed Purple Music, citing individuals accustomed to the matter.
“French security officials were acutely concerned about Islamic State’s use of Telegram to recruit operatives and plan attacks,” the report mentioned.
