Telegram chief govt Pavel Durov was accustomed to rubbing shoulders with France’s enterprise and political elite throughout frequent visits to the nation, the place he bounced between Parisian palace inns and the sun-soaked south.
However final month, the 39-year-old obtained a hostile welcome upon arriving on a non-public jet at Paris-Le Bourget airport. The Russia-born billionaire, who’s now a French-Emirati citizen, was arrested and later positioned underneath formal investigation over alleged complicity in prison exercise on his messaging app, from drug trafficking to the dissemination of kid sexual abuse materials.
Durov, who goes by the title “Du Rove” on his Telegram channel in addition to his French passport, wrote on Thursday he was stunned to be personally focused for “different folks’s unlawful use of Telegram”.
Banned from leaving France, his detention has sparked diplomatic uproar and a worldwide debate over free speech towards on-line security. However the occasions additionally present how Durov had grown snug in France and didn’t heed regulation enforcement issues about Telegram.
“The French authorities had quite a few methods to succeed in me to request help. As a French citizen, I used to be a frequent visitor on the French consulate in Dubai,” Durov wrote, including that he had just lately helped French authorities set up a hotline with Telegram to take care of terrorism threats.
Previous to his arrest, Durov loved a heat embrace by the French authorities, significantly after 2017, when a newly elected administration underneath Emmanuel Macron was eager to advertise France as a vacation spot for entrepreneurship and tech funding.
A yr later, the French president met Durov on the Élysée Palace, in response to an individual with information of the state of affairs. In 2021, the nation granted him French citizenship underneath a particular emeritus standing, including to his assortment of passports that embody ones for the United Arab Emirates and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Official France preferred Telegram. Macron has had an lively account since 2016 on which he posted as just lately as mid-August. A lot of his 2017 presidential marketing campaign was run on its channels, in response to two folks concerned. As soon as in energy, Telegram was broadly utilized in his administration, in response to the folks.
That modified final yr when then-prime minister Élisabeth Borne issued a round requiring members of the federal government to take away apps similar to WhatsApp, Sign and Telegram from their telephones in favour of a homegrown various over issues about their safety. Even so, the French inside ministry’s fundamental communication channel with journalists stays on Telegram.
Macron has been left to defend the choice to grant Durov French citizenship. “It was taken within the context of a concerted technique,” Macron stated final month, stating that the identical standing was given to entrepreneurs similar to Snap’s Evan Spiegel in addition to skilled athletes and actors.
“It’s an excellent factor and I’ll proceed to do it,” the president stated, including he was “completely unaware” of the investigation or Durov’s arrival in France.
Telegram, based in 2013, finally moved its base to Dubai. However its chief has spent the previous decade additionally forging ties with eminent French figures.
This consists of tech and telecoms mogul Xavier Niel, who helped dealer introductions for Durov in France, in response to two folks with information of the connection. After his arrest, Durov first requested contact with Niel, in response to AFP, although there isn’t a indication as as to whether the French entrepreneur was reached or responded.
Folks with information of Durov’s visits to Paris stated he would keep on the metropolis’s well-known inns, together with the Plaza Athénée, the Ritz and the Hôtel de Crillon. He was a visitor at Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich’s palatial villa in Antibes earlier than it was seized by the French authorities in 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In addition to mingling within the French start-up and enterprise capital scenes, he would additionally attend occasions with American traders and enterprise capitalists visiting France.
“I’m an enormous admirer of French tradition, artwork, design, structure, delicacies, historical past and language,” Durov wrote on Telegram in 2018. “France is definite to play a fair bigger function on this planet tradition and economic system in years to come back.”
“Apart from the girlfriends and the inns, the place it’s clear he preferred to indulge himself . . . he’s not a exhibit,” stated an individual in France’s tech scene. “He’s extraordinarily targeted on his firm. An actual entrepreneur.”
“He likes procreating,” stated one other one that has had dealings with Durov in Dubai, referring to the billionaire’s boast on Telegram that he had fathered “over 100 organic children” via sperm donation. “Apart from that I feel he lives a kosher life.”
Durov has traditionally been cautious of getting near governments. Having launched VKontakte, Russia’s reply to Fb, Durov has stated he was pressured to go away the corporate and Russia in 2014 after refusing calls for from Moscow to share the information of Ukrainian opposition customers.
Leaked journey data revealed by Russian language media and court docket paperwork from a separate prison course of in Switzerland point out he has travelled out and in of his nation of origin usually within the years since.
Durov beforehand dismissed questions over hyperlinks to the Kremlin as “conspiracy theories”.
The phrases of Durov’s judicial monitoring in France might change. He’s “banned from leaving the nation [but] in time this obligation might disappear, both ordered by the investigating decide answerable for the case, or the investigating chamber”, stated Jérôme Goudard, a prison lawyer in Paris. “This might be carried out with regard to his skilled state of affairs: he’s the CEO of a multinational firm, on prime of the diplomatic points.”
“We’re ready to go away markets that aren’t suitable with our rules,” Durov wrote on Thursday. He, nevertheless, stays caught in France.
“All the large tech folks know Pavel, however they may all say that they know him little or no,” stated the individual within the French tech scene. “I had the impression he was an individual who was very alone.”
Further reporting by Robert Smith and Sam Jones