French prosecutors have provided preliminary information. press release On Monday, we reported on the investigation into Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, who was suddenly arrested at Le Bourget Airport in Paris on Saturday. Durov has not yet been charged with any crime, but officials said he was being held as part of an investigation into an “unnamed person” and could remain in police custody until Wednesday.
The investigation began on July 8 and includes a wide range of charges, including money laundering, violations related to the import and export of encryption tools, failure to cooperate with law enforcement, “conspiracy” to traffic drugs, and possession and distribution of child pornography.
According to the press release, the investigation was initiated by the “Section J3” cybercrime prosecutors and involved collaboration with the French Cybercrime Fighting Center (C3N) and the National Office Against Fraud (ONAF). “It was within this procedural framework that Pavel Durov was questioned by investigators,” Paris prosecutor Laure Becouault wrote in a statement.
Telegram did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the investigation, but said: declaration In a post on the company’s news channel on Sunday, Durov said he had “nothing to hide.”
“Given that there are several ongoing preliminary investigations into Telegram in France regarding the protection of minors’ rights, and that it is cooperating with other French investigative authorities on cyberbullying, for example, Durov’s arrest does not seem like a very unusual measure,” said Cannelle Lavite, a French lawyer specializing in freedom of speech issues.
Lavite notes that Durov is a French citizen who was arrested on French soil on an arrest warrant issued by a French judge. She adds that the list of charges involved in the investigation is “extensive,” which is not surprising in the context of “France’s ambiguous legislative arsenal” that seeks to balance content moderation with press freedom.
Durov is a controversial figure in Telegram’s leadership, largely because he has generally not cooperated with demands to moderate content on the platform. In some ways, this has positioned him as a champion of free speech against government censorship, but it has also made Telegram a haven for hate speech, criminal activity, and abuse. And while the platform is often billed as a secure communication tool, it is largely open and accessible by default.
“Telegram is not an encrypted messenger by default. Most people use it as a social network, and they don’t use any of the features that have end-to-end encryption,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab. “What that means is that Telegram has a wide range of features and access rights that could potentially moderate content and respond to legitimate requests. That puts Pavel Durov at the center of all sorts of potential government pressure.”
In addition to all this, many researchers asked a question If a user chooses to enable Telegram’s end-to-end encryption, whether that encryption is durable.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on social media: mail On Monday, he said: “France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication… The arrest of the Telegram boss on French soil was carried out as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. This is in no way a political decision.”
News of Durov’s arrest has heightened concerns that Telegram’s stability could be threatened and the platform undermined. The case is also likely to have implications for long-running global debates about social media moderation, government influence, and the use of end-to-end encryption to protect privacy.
Rabitt said the case raised a debate about “the balance between encrypted communications and the right to freedom of speech on the one hand, and user protection (content censorship) on the other.” But she noted that much is unknown about the investigation and that “there are still a lot of gray areas.”
On Monday afternoon, I think I received the following message on Telegram: Download Boost In the US, it rose from 18th to 8th place in Apple’s App Store rankings. Global iOS downloads increased by 4%, and in France it ranked first in the App Store Social Network category and third overall.
