French police arrested Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov at an airport near Paris on Saturday for alleged crimes related to the popular messaging app, French media reported.
The 39-year-old Franco-Russian billionaire was arrested Saturday evening at Le Bourget airport, north of the French capital, one of the officials told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
French television channels TF1 and BFM TV also reported the arrest, citing unnamed sources, according to Reuters.
He had just returned from Baku, Azerbaijan, another source close to the case told AFP.
Durov is expected to appear in court on Sunday.
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Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, and the French Interior Ministry and French police also did not comment.
OFMIN, the French agency responsible for preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Mr Durov as the coordinating agency in a preliminary investigation into alleged offences including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime and advocating terrorism, one of the sources close to the case told AFP.
Durov is suspected of failing to take measures to curb criminal use of his platform.
“Enough impunity for Telegram,” one of the investigators said, adding that they were surprised that Durov came to Paris knowing he was a wanted man.
Durov launched Telegram in 2013 and left Russia in 2014 after being ousted from VKontakte — a popular Russian social networking site he co-founded — after being pressured by the Kremlin to hand over users’ personal data, which he refused to do.
In a 2016 interview with “60 Minutes,” Durov said he was “horrified” when he learned that Telegram, designed to be heavily encrypted so governments could not access users’ personal data, was being used by terrorist groups like the Islamic State to communicate.
“I personally am for privacy,” Durov said in the interview when asked whether privacy concerns outweighed security risks. “But one thing should be clear: You can’t make a single exception for law enforcement without putting the private communications of hundreds of millions of people at risk, because encryption is either secure or it’s not.”
