Telegram chief Durov calls France’s charges “astonishing” and “misleading”
Telegram founder and chief executive Pavel Durov on Thursday hit out at France for arresting and charging him last month for publishing extremist and illegal content on the popular messaging app.
In a lengthy post on Telegram, his first comments since his arrest, Durov said it was “astonishing” that he was being held responsible for other people’s content.
“Accusing a CEO of crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages using laws that predate smartphones is a misguided approach,” the CEO declared.
He also criticised claims that “Telegram is some kind of anarchic paradise” and said “we remove millions of harmful posts and channels every day.”
He denied France’s allegations that Paris had not received a response from Telegram to its requests, saying he had personally helped French authorities “set up a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France.”
But striking a more conciliatory tone at the end of his message, Durov said Telegram’sHe claimed that the platform’s 950 million users worldwide were experiencing “growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.” “I made it my personal goal to ensure that we significantly improve things in this regard,” he stated, indicating that more information would be shared later and that it was being worked on “internally.”
“I hope that Telegram — and the social networking industry as a whole — will become safer and stronger as a result of the events in August.” He added that “we are ready to leave that country” when Telegram cannot agree with local regulators on “the right balance betweenHe has received support from fellow tech tycoon and X chief executive, Elon Musk, who has posted comments under the hashtag #FreePavel. Durov was arrested on August 24 after arriving on a private jet at Le Bourget airport outside Paris and was questioned by investigators in the following days.
He was granted conditional release on bail of five million euros ($5.5 million) and on the condition that he must report to a police station twice a week as well as remain in France.
A mysterious figure who rarely speaks in public, Durov is a citizen of Russia, France and the United Arab Emirates, where Telegram is based.
