Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov was arrested by French authorities at airport, on Saturday evening, on his way back from Azerbaijan
The CEO of Telegram is allegedly wanted for not cooperating with law enforcement and alleged complicity with illicit activities taking place on the messaging application
Telegram Founder and CEO was arrested at Le Bourget airport, Paris, on his way back from Azerbaijan.
Durav had an arrest warrant issued against him by the national directorate of the French judicial police, the warrant was reportedly based on the grounds of a lack of cooperation with law enforcement.
Durov, who has been a strong supporter of freedom of speech and freedom of association rights, had previously been at odds with draconian demands from governments. The CEO had made headlines for not cooperating with Russian authorities over his earlier social media application – VK, a Russian social media and networking service. The founder had refused to censor content and provide the government information regarding its users, which ultimately resulting in him leaving the firm and the country.
While Telegram has come under the radar for allegedly being used for illicit activities, the social messaging app has also played a key role in ensuring freedom of speech and expression. The messaging application was especially in the highlight during the Hong Kong protest on the Anti-extradition bill in 2021. The app allowed protesters to coordinate their protests without facing government scrutiny.
The encrypted messaging app, based in Dubai, has positioned itself as an alternative to US-owned social media platforms, such as Facebook and WhattApp, which have been under various investigations for their commercial exploitation of users’ personal data. Telegram has committed to never disclosing any information about its users to governments.
Telegram’s crypto takes hit as a result
TONCOIN (TON), is a Layer 1 smart contract network specializing in financial applications that was first developed by Telegram’s co-founder and brother of Pavel, Nikolai Durov. Known as “Telegram Open Network” but it has been relaunched as “The Open Network” under the TON Foundation. TON traders have reacted strongly to the arrest of the social media founder. The coin has lost over 16% of its value in just one day, trading at $5.67 at the time of publishing, according to CoinGecko. The market cap of the coin currently sits at just over $14 billion.
In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Durov spoke about his belief that Telegram needed to remain a neutral entity platform and spoke of ever increasing pressure from governments and intelligence agencies for them to co-operate in censoring opinions opposing official government narratives. For this reason he stated that he was reluctant to even travel to places such as the USA, China and Europe as he feared that he could be targeted.
