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According to French television network , Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram’s messaging app, was arrested Saturday evening as he left his private jet in France’s Bourget Airport.
The news of Durov’s detention sparked a lot of discussion and speculation in social media, even on Telegram, but it appears to be based largely on the same few reports from French media. A request for comment was not immediately answered by Telegram or a spokesperson from France’s ONAF, the national anti-fraud agency.
According to TF1, Durov was the subject of a warrant issued in France following a preliminary investigation by police. According to French authorities, Telegram’s inability to moderate content and refusal to cooperate with law-enforcement makes Durov an accomplice of drug trafficking, money-laundering, and the sharing of child pornography via the app.
The reported arrest is likely to fuel further debate about the extent to which messaging applications should be held accountable (legally or otherwise) for the messages that their users share.
Forbes estimates Durov’s net worth to be $15.5 billion. was born in Russia but left in 2014 when he refused to comply with government pressures to release data on Ukrainian protest leaders that he had obtained from his former social network Vkontakte. Durov lives in Dubai where Telegram’s headquarters are located. His plane was flying in from Azerbaijan.
Durov stated last month that Telegram has 950 million active users, with the goal of reaching 1 Billion this year. The company also claims to only have about 30 engineers, which is a small team for a large app like Telegram. This makes Durov an even bigger part of the company.
