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Telegram CEO and co-founder Pavel Durov who is in custody in France. (Reuters)
Pavel Durov, under investigation in France, claims French authorities should have contacted his company rather than detaining him. He denies app abuse
The founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, under probe in France, said on Friday that French authorities should have approached his company with their complaints rather than detaining him.
In his first public comments since his detention last month, Durov, on his Telegram channel, denied media claims the app was an “anarchic paradise”. He said the investigation into the app was surprising in that French authorities had access to a “hot line” he had helped set up and they could have contacted Telegram’s EU representative at any time.
“If a country is unhappy with an Internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” he wrote. “Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”
I’m still trying to understand what happened in France. But we hear the concerns. I made it my personal goal to prevent abusers of Telegram’s platform from interfering with the future of our 950+ million users.My full post below. https://t.co/cDvRSodjst
— Pavel Durov (@durov) September 5, 2024
‘Prepared to leave markets’
In a lengthy post on Telegram, Durov said, “We are prepared to leave markets that aren’t compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money. We are driven by the intention to bring good and defend the basic rights of people, particularly in places where these rights are violated.”
Telegram, he said, was not perfect, but he denied any abuse associated with the app. “But the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue,” he wrote. “We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day.”
‘Anarchic paradise’
“All of that does not mean Telegram is perfect. Even the fact that authorities could be confused by where to send requests is something that we should improve. But the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports (like this or this ). We have direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster,” he said.
Durov, born in Russia but now a French national, was detained late last month in France amid an investigation into crimes related to child pornography, drug trafficking, and fraudulent transactions associated with the app. He was held at Le Bourget airport outside Paris after arriving on a private jet and was subsequently questioned by investigators. Later, he was granted conditional release on a $5.5 million bail, with the conditions that he report to a police station twice a week and remain in France.
(With agency inputs)
