Getty Images | Steve Jennings
Following the arrest of Telegram CEO and co-founder Pavel Durov in France over the weekend, his pre-trial detention has been extended for up to four days while a judge decides whether to press charges against him.
“The pre-trial detention of 39-year-old Durov has been extended beyond Sunday night by the investigating judge handling the case, according to a source close to the investigation,” Le Monde reported. “This first pre-trial detention may last up to 96 hours. When this phase of pre-trial detention ends, the judge can decide whether to release him or press charges and keep him in further pre-trial detention.”
Telegram has been accused of “lack of cooperation with law enforcement regarding drug trafficking, child sexual content and fraud,” the BBC wrote. Telegram said yesterday that it “complies with EU laws, including the Digital Services Act” and that the platform's “moderation is in line with industry standards and is constantly being improved.”
“Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe,” the company said. “It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the misuse of this platform. Nearly a billion users around the world use Telegram as a means of communication and as a source of important information. We await a swift resolution of this situation.”
Durov's arrest warrant was issued by “France's OFMIN, an agency tasked with preventing violence against minors,” Le Monde wrote. The warrant is reportedly linked to “a preliminary investigation into suspected crimes including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime and the promotion of terrorism.”
The New York Times reported: “Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement that the arrest was part of an investigation launched on July 8 'against an unnamed person' on a range of possible charges, including aiding and abetting the distribution of child pornography and drug trafficking, money laundering and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement.”
Reuters wrote that a police spokesman told the news agency “that Durov is being investigated by the national cybercrime and fraud offices for failing to cooperate in cyber and financial crimes on Telegram.”
Macron: Arrest not a political decision
Durov was born in Russia and also holds citizenship of the United Arab Emirates and France. Telegram is based in the United Arab Emirates.
The Russian Embassy in France said it had “immediately asked the French authorities to explain the reasons for the detention and demanded that [Durov’s] Rights are protected and consular access is granted. So far, the French side has refused to cooperate on this issue.”
French President Emmanuel Macron wrote today that the French judicial system acts independently. “The arrest of the Telegram president on French territory took place in the context of an ongoing judicial investigation,” he wrote, according to a Google translation. “This is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to decide.” Macron also wrote that France is committed to “freedom of expression and communication.”
Telegram offers a mix of private messaging and social networking features. Users can create groups of up to 200,000 people and the Channels feature allows you to post public messages to audiences of any size. Telegram messages do not have end-to-end encryption by default, but the additional level of security can be enabled for one-on-one conversations.
“If you want to use end-to-end encryption in Telegram, you must manually enable an optional end-to-end encryption feature called 'Secret Chats' for every single private conversation you want to have,” wrote Matthew Green, a professor and cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University. “The feature is explicitly not enabled for the vast majority of conversations and is only available for one-on-one conversations and never for group chats with more than two people.”