The creator of the Telegram messaging app, one of the most popular apps in the world, has been arrested in France after landing. The charges are related to encrypted messages being used by criminals.
Telegram offers end-to-end encryption to its users, meaning third parties cannot read messages without having one of the two phones unlocked. Reuters says:
Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire founder and owner of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at Le Bourget airport outside Paris shortly after landing on a private jet late on Saturday and placed in custody, three sources told Reuters.
The arrest of the 39-year-old technology billionaire prompted on Sunday a warning from Moscow to Paris that he should be accorded his rights and criticism from X owner Elon Musk who said that free speech in Europe was under attack.
Durov, a free speech advocate, had fled Russia following Putin’s greater crackdown on freedom of speech. His arrest in France is shocking to many who see the West as a nation of free speech in the world. NY Times reports:
Mr. Durov, whose net worth was estimated by Bloomberg at more than $9 billion, has largely avoided the kind of public scrutiny faced by top executives of other large online platforms, including Elon Musk of X, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Shou Chew of TikTok and Sundar Pichai of Google.
Mr. Durov’s arrest has little precedent. While the European Union and United States government have summoned and questioned leaders of other social media firms, rarely has a major tech leader been arrested over what takes place on such sites. In 2016, the Brazilian authorities arrested a senior Facebook executive after the company failed to turn over information from WhatsApp as part of a drug trafficking investigation.
Elon Musk and other top executives of communications platforms could be at risk of arrest for refusing to be coerced by the European Union’s censorship laws.
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