A lawyer for Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, who is the subject of an unprecedented investigation in France, said on Thursday it was “absurd” to hold the head of a social network responsible for any criminal activity carried out on the platform.
The case against Durov, which highlights the government's uneasy relationship with major social media companies, is seen as a warning to major tech companies about how they handle alleged misconduct in their apps.
The Kremlin also spoke out about an incident that has further strained relations between Russia and France, saying the prosecution of a Russian-born IT executive accused of allowing illegal content on a platform used by nearly a billion people should not turn into “political persecution”.
A French judge placed Durov under formal investigation on Wednesday, four days after police arrested him at Le Bourget airport near Paris, intensifying a debate over where free speech ends and law enforcement begins.
David-Olivier Kaminski, a lawyer representing Durov in France, said it was “absurd to hold the platform or its management responsible” for any wrongdoing on Telegram and that the platform complied with European law.
A French judge said on Wednesday that Durov was suspected of conspiring to operate an online platform that enabled illegal trade, child sexual abuse images and drug trafficking.
The 39-year-old Durov is also under investigation for suspected money laundering and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement. The platform said this week that Durov has “nothing to hide.”
Durov's arrest marks the first for a CEO of a major messaging platform, but it is not Telegram's first run-in with police and law enforcement amid rising tensions between the government and social media giants.
We bring you the latest on the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov.
In 2023, a Brazilian court ordered the app to be suspended after it was ordered to share information about extremist and neo-Nazi groups using the platform.
Do a “better job”?
A year earlier, when a Brazilian supreme court judge suspended Telegram for repeatedly refusing to comply with judicial orders, Durov blamed the company's shortcomings on email problems and said, “We could definitely have done a better job.”
“We are confident that once a reliable channel of communication is established, we will be able to efficiently process requests to remove public channels that are illegal in Brazil,” he wrote.
A French police source said this week that Telegram was seen as much less willing to cooperate with authorities than other social media platforms, which are also coming under pressure from authorities.
Brazil's Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Wednesday ordered billionaire Elon Musk to appoint a legal representative in Brazil for his messaging platform, X, within 24 hours or face the site being suspended in the country.
Musk, the billionaire owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, responded to news of Durov's detention by saying: “In Europe in 2030, you can be executed for liking a meme.”
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said this week that President Biden's administration has pressured the company to “censor” COVID-19-related content during the pandemic, appearing to refer to White House requests to remove misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.
A formal investigation in France does not necessarily mean guilt or lead to a trial, but it does mean a judge has decided there is enough evidence to proceed with an investigation, which can take years before going to trial or being shelved.
Durov, who was in police custody for four days after his arrest, was released on bail on the condition he pays 5 million euros ($5.6 million) and does not leave French territory.
He must also report to police twice a week in the town where he is staying. He must return home at a certain time, a judicial source said, without specifying where he will live or how many hours a day he must be at home.
French-Russian tensions
Durov holds French, United Arab Emirates and Russian citizenship. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that his arrest and the charges against him had pushed relations between France and Russia to a rock bottom.
Telegram is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet republics. The platform has become essential for battlefield communications in the Ukrainian war, being used by governments and soldiers on both sides of the conflict to share war-related news and propaganda.
“It is important that what is happening in France does not develop into political persecution,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.
“I know that the French president denies any political link (to this incident), but at the same time, there are certain accusations. We will have to wait and see what happens.”
Russia has tried unsuccessfully before to block Telegram and has fined the company several times for failing to remove content it deemed illegal.
French President Emmanuel Macron has long been a leader in Tech HubHe said Durov's arrest was “in no way a political decision” and that the investigation was decided by judicial authorities, not the government.
According to a person close to Macron, the president had lunch with Durov in 2018 as part of a series of meetings with technology entrepreneurs, and Durov became a French citizen in 2021 in a rare move for a public figure.
