Telegram Billionaire Boss Pavel Durov Speaks Out for First Time Since French Arrest

PARIS – Russian billionaire founder of Telegram Pavel Durov on Thursday spoke out for the first time since he was arrested by authorities French.

The Telegram boss slammed France for arresting and charging him last month over publishing extremist and illegal content on the app he founded.

In posting In a lengthy post on Telegram, his first comments since his arrest, Durov said it was “shocking” that he was being held responsible for someone else’s content.

“Using the law from the smart phone era to prosecute a CEO for crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach,” he said.

He also slammed claims that “Telegram is some kind of anarchist paradise” as “completely untrue”.

“We remove millions of malicious posts and channels every day,” Durov said, as quoted by AFPFriday (6/9/2024).

He denied accusations from France that Paris had not received a response from Telegram to his request, saying he had personally helped French authorities set up an emergency hotline with Telegram to deal with terrorism threats in France.

However, taking a softer tone at the end of his message, Durov said that Telegram’s soaring user base—which he now says is 950 million worldwide—”causes ongoing problems that make it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”

“That’s why I’ve made it my personal goal to make sure we improve things significantly on this,” he said, adding that it was being worked on “internally” and more details would be shared in the future.