Russian lawmakers hit back at arrest of Telegram chief Pavel Durov in France

Russian MPs have responded to reports of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s detention in France for failing to effectively monitor illicit activities on his messaging network.

According to French network TF1 and news agency AFP, the billionaire born in Russia was detained at Paris-Le Bourget airport on Saturday evening after arriving on his private plane from Azerbaijan.

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Vladislav Davankov, the deputy speaker of the state Duma, said he had asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to ensure Durov’s release. “The arrest of [Durov] might have political motivations and be a technique of getting personal information from Telegram users. “We must not allow this,” he stated on his Telegram channel.

In a mocking message on his Telegram channel, Andrey Klishas, director of Russia’s Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Law, portrayed France’s actions as a “fight for freedom of speech and European values”.

According to reports, Durov had a warrant out for his arrest in France after authorities there launched a preliminary investigation into whether a lack of moderation on the Dubai-based platform facilitated illegal activity such as terrorism, drug peddling, money laundering, fraud and child exploitation. He is set to appear in court on Sunday.

According to Interfax, the Russian embassy in France requested consular access to Durov despite the fact that his attorneys had not made a request.

A spokesman from Telegram and Durov declined to comment.

Telegram, which was founded in 2013, has grown in popularity in recent years, becoming an essential communications tool for world leaders as well as a resource for sharing news and organizing during geopolitical crises such as the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas conflict. With around one billion users, it is currently one of the most popular messaging applications, competing with Meta’s WhatsApp.

Durov’s marketing of Telegram as a privacy-focused and censorship-resistant chat network has sparked criticism, with researchers saying that it has become a refuge for criminals and hackers who openly sell unlawful services with no consequences.

His detention is expected to fuel global discussion about whether social media sites and messaging apps should emphasize free speech or more strictly control the information they contain, as well as whether CEOs should be held personally accountable for failures.

The announcement sparked an instant reaction from free-speech advocates. “It’s 2030 in Europe, and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” Elon Musk, X’s billionaire owner and self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist, posted on his social networking site on Saturday. Musk has battled with EU and UK officials over his platform’s perceived weak moderation, which police and experts claim was used alongside Telegram to coordinate and fuel far-right riots in Southport, UK.

Durov, who is noted for always wearing black and adopting radical health fads, was once dubbed the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia” after co-founding Russia’s most famous social networking network, VKontakte, in his hometown of St Petersburg in 2007.

However, he departed Russia in 2014 and sold the firm after refusing to comply with demands from the country’s intelligence agency to transfer the data of specific Ukrainian VK members, according to his account. A bitcoin wealth then allowed him to travel and fund Telegram before settling in Dubai, which he describes as “neutral”. He presently has dual French-Emirati citizenship. Forbes puts his net worth at $15.5 billion.

While Durov was born in Russia, he has said unequivocally that he has severed relations with the nation, despite assertions by detractors that the Kremlin may still have ties to or influence over Telegram.

“He thought his biggest problems were in Russia and left…””He wanted to be a brilliant ‘citizen of the world,’ living well without a homeland,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now a popular right-wing pundit, posted on his Telegram channel on Sunday. “He miscalculated. “To our common enemies, he remains Russian — unpredictable and dangerous, of different blood,” he stated.

In his first interview with the Financial Times since 2017, Durov defended his “hands-off” policy to content moderation, stating that “typically feedback from users is please do not start censoring any content”.

However, as regulators surrounded, he periodically caved to public pressure, shutting down Isis-linked groups in 2019 and extremist and white supremacist groups participating in the January 6th, 2021 siege of the US Capitol building.

Earlier this year, a Spanish court ruled that the app be barred in the nation following an inquiry into the spreading of unlawful information protected by copyright. The prohibition has subsequently been lifted.

Telegram’s standards specify that it does not allow spam and scams, illegal pornography, or the advocacy of violence on “publicly viewable Telegram channels”