EXPLAINED: What’s the Deal With Pavel Durov, Telegram and France?

Pavel Durov, a Russian-born tech entrepreneur and creator behind the VKontakte and Telegram social media platforms, was arrested in France on Aug. 24 when his private jet landed for refueling.

French authorities have accused Durov, who obtained French citizenship in 2021, of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his Telegram messenger platform, with an arrest warrant on alleged offenses including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime and promotion of terrorism.

But just a few years prior, Durov allegedly had lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron when the latter invited him to move Telegram to Paris to no avail. Macron said Durov’s recent arrest was “in no way a political decision.”

Now, with Durov in custody, authorities have until Wednesday evening to decide whether to press charges.

Who is Pavel Durov?

Durov is a Russian-born entrepreneur and programmer best known as the founder of VKontakte, Russia’s equivalent to Facebook, and Telegram, an instant messaging app with millions of users worldwide.

Durov left Russia in 2014 and claimed that he was forced to sell VKontakte to Kremlin-friendly investors amidst conflicts with the Kremlin on data privacy, particularly that of Ukrainian protestors.

“Providing personal data of Ukrainians to Russian authorities would not only be a violation of the law, but also a betrayal of all those millions of Ukrainians who trusted us,” he wrote on VKontakte at the time.

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Ukraine banned the use of VKontakte in 2017 in a bid to fight Kremlin propaganda.

Following his departure from Russia, he obtained citizenship in France, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), St. Kitts and Nevis. He presumably retained his native Russian citizenship.

Durov holds libertarian views on privacy, free speech and internet freedom – similar to those of billionaire Elon Musk – which have earned Durov vocal support from Musk upon his arrest.

Durov launched Telegram in 2013, which has since gained a significant following with a wide range of users, including millions of users in Ukraine and Russia.

What is Telegram?

Telegram is an instant messaging application similar to Meta’s WhatsApp and Messenger.

The application offers basic communication features such as text-based messaging as well as video and audio calls. It also offers group chats and broadcasting channels that could be used to disseminate messages to a wide audience.

The application positions itself as a privacy-oriented messenger, which allows users to remain anonymous.

However, conversations on Telegram are not end-to-end encrypted by default, with the encryption instead carried out on the server level, meaning that theoretically, Telegram holds the encryption keys to decipher the messages.

The company remedied the problem of potential government monitoring by employing servers distributed worldwide, which made it difficult for governments to request encryption keys due to a lack of jurisdiction.

That said, users can enable the “secret chat” function, which employs end-to-end encryption and requires physical access to the devices to view the messages.

Telegram is active in both Ukraine and Russia, with 10.8 million downloads in the former and 34.4 million in the latter, according to research. Its monthly active users (MAUs) reportedly reached 800 million by July 2023.

Both Kyiv and the Kremlin utilized Telegram to disseminate government narratives, with numerous news channels – both regulated and unregulated – sharing war updates with the masses from both sides of the war.

Ukrainian lawmakers and officials have previously voiced concerns over the spread of Russian propaganda through Telegram.

Russian troops also favored the application for communication, while Ukrainian troops favored the more secure Signal messenger for frontline operations.

France, Durov and Telegram

The anonymous nature of Telegram is likely the culprit for France’s concerns, where criminals such as terrorists and drug dealers have used the application to coordinate illegal activities anonymously.

Misinformation spread on the platform is likely another concern for French authorities.

Now, French authorities are determining whether Durov and Telegram’s lack of action against the criminal use of the platform and refusal to cooperate with authorities to counter illegal content constitute a crime under French law, particularly one signed this year that stipulates online platforms to help root out misinformation.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), French authorities have long been interested in Telegram’s activities, with French intelligence supposedly working with UAE authorities in 2017 to hack Durov’s phone in a previously unknown spying operation code-named “Purple Music.”

“French security officials were acutely concerned about Islamic State’s use of Telegram to recruit operatives and plan attacks,” the WSJ reported.

However, the UAE also invested $75 million into Telegram last year.

In 2018, a year after the spy operation, Macron reportedly invited Durov for lunch and suggested that the latter move Telegram’s operation to France, a notion Durov declined, the WSJ reported, citing unnamed sources reportedly familiar with the matter.

Controversies of Durov’s arrest

While there’s a point to be made that large corporations have a lawful obligation to curtail harmful content, whether they should be criminally liable for actions committed by others using their services remains a subject of debate.

On the one hand, the EU’s Digital Services Act requires “very large” online platforms to vet out harmful content, though Telegram claimed that it doesn’t meet the criteria with less than 45 million MAUs.

On the other hand, Durov’s supporters argue that content moderation violates free speech, and that Telegram is merely a communication platform and should not be liable for users’ criminal acts.

There are also concerns about Telegram potentially cooperating with authorities by granting them access to private communications, which some claimed would be a huge blow to data privacy.

It’s still unclear if France is demanding some form of cooperation from Durov – and how that theoretical cooperation might work in practice.

Hypothetically, Telegram could ban channels deemed controversial or illegal by governments from the platform – which it has done so in the past to comply with Apple’s request in fear of being taken down from the App Store.

Telegram could also theoretically provide French authorities with access to communications with no end-to-end encryption between persons of interest – such as Islamist extremists – but that could potentially set a bad precedent for government monitoring of political dissidents, which ironically was the very reason Durov claimed to have caused his departure from Russia.

With Durov’s detention deadline soon approaching, French authorities’ response about whether to press charges – and what those charges would be – should provide more clarity on the situation.