Pavel Durov has been in custody in France for a day, but there is still no official information about the arrest itself or the claims against him. French authorities say he was arrested for refusing to cooperate in criminal investigations and Durov is being charged with complicity in illegal activities that were carried out with the help of his platform. An official statement from the Paris prosecutor's office is expected on August 26.

Durov flew to France from Azerbaijan on a business jet. He was detained by the police at about 8pm local time, immediately after the plane landed, as part of a "preliminary investigation", the French TV channel TF1 reported citing sources in local law enforcement agencies.

"He has allowed countless crimes to be committed on his platform and has done nothing to moderate it or cooperate [with the authorities]," TF1’s sources said as cited by The Bell.

Durov’s arrest raises the difficult question of if the owner of a messaging service can be held criminally liable for the criminal acts of subscribers using the service. While EU legislation exists limiting what can be said on social media, banning things like hate speech and child pornography, the industry has thus far been largely left to self-regulate. However, the debate about that is heating up due to the outsized influence of social media on politics and the quirks and biases of the owners of these media. Durov’s arrest will only pour oil on this debate’s fire.

French authorities asked Telegram to allow them access to the service to monitor the messages of suspected criminals, but Durov has always taken a hard line of never allowing third parties access to the messages of his platform’s members.

Telegram said in a statement on August 26 that Durov has done nothing wrong and has always cooperated with the European authorities.

"Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act – its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving,” the company said in a post on Telegram. The Digital Services Act was introduced earlier this year as governments slowly start to address the problem of unregulated messaging that facilitates criminal activity or promotes hate speech and provokes violence. It applies to any service that has more than 45mn users. Telegram tried to avoid the rules by saying it has less than 45mn users in the EU and so doesn’t count as a “very large online platform.”

Durov, who holds Russian, UAE and French passports, allegedly knew that a warrant had been issued for him in France, but for some reason he flew to Paris anyway.

Access to the Telegram service has always been a hot button issue. In 2018 Durov famously clashed with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), which also asked him to provide it with the electronic keys to access messages and Durov refused. The government then tried to block the service and failed. After two years the law to block Telegram was withdrawn on the grounds that it was “technically impossible” to block the service.

Since then, question marks have been raised over Durov’s relationship with the Kremlin. Wired recently reported that Russians have been arrested for making anti-war remarks on the supposedly encrypted Telegram service and arresting officers have quoted their messages back at the accused.

More recently, the Kremlin started to throttle YouTube at the end of July. Two weeks later the services of WhatsApp and Telegram were also disrupted in mid-August.

Social media have spread the incorrect information that Durov faces 20 years in jail if convicted. The French National Police told Bloomberg that they have no information about the arrest, and the Paris prosecutor's office noted that at this stage, according to procedures, they are refraining from commenting.

Politicised

The case has quickly become politicised. Former President Dmitry Medvedev said that Durov had brought the arrest on himself when he left Russia and became a “citizen of the world.”

State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs have issued an appeal to the French authorities to release Durov, on the basis of his Russian citizenship, in an echo of the White House calls for the release of US journalist Evan Gershkovich, who spent over a year in jail on espionage charges before a prisoner swap that was completed on August 1.

The Russian Embassy in Paris asked for consular access to Durov on the morning of August 25, but said the French authorities had ignored the request so far.

The Russian authorities expressed concern that the West will now get access to the personal information of Telegram users and the Duma has ordered all deputies to delete all conversations they have had on Telegram that concern official matters.

The case may also have implications for the war in Ukraine, as reportedly both Ukrainian and Russian commanders routinely use Telegram to share orders and information amongst their commands.

The Duma members are framing Durov’s arrest in terms of “freedom of speech” and lampooning the “European values” that led to his arrest – with most of these comments being posted on Telegram.

Pros and cons

Durov has been accused of not moderating the Telegram service and allowing criminals to hide behind the cloak of encryption to conduct their nefarious business, albeit accounting for a small fraction of the content on Telegram.

It is the encryption and the inability of the authorities to block Telegram that has made it so powerful. Military bloggers (milbloggers) commenting on the progress of the war and sharing news on Telegram are a major source of information on the war, where both the Kremlin and Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) tightly control access to information.

Telegram also played a central role in leaderless the mass demonstrations in Minsk following the massively falsified presidential elections in August 2020 that returned Alexander Lukashenko to office for another five years. The Telegram channel Nexta was widely used and organically coordinated the crowds and countered police tactics to the authorities’ frustration, in a triumph of democracy, but which ultimately failed to oust Lukashenko.

In addition to the FSB’s interest in accessing Telegram, The Bell reports that the FBI interrogated Durov every time he entered the US and tried to persuade him to disclose the correspondence of terrorist suspects, and bribed Telegram developers to create a backdoor to the service for their use.

On that occasion, Telegram met the authorities halfway and deleted several accounts associated with terrorism. Durov is well aware of the problem. In an interview with the Financial Times the paper called the platform "a hotbed of criminal activity", and Durov promised to improve the moderation process this year. But he immediately added that there is no need to limit people's ability to express their thoughts if they "do not cross red lines." Since then, there has been some moderation of the platform, but commentators universally agree that it has been very weak. In Telegram’s privacy policy, the company says it is ready to disclose data to the authorities only by court order in the event of suspicion of terrorism. On the whole Telegram has been extremely reluctant to expose its users to outside scrutiny or even monitor what is happening on the platform and how it is being used.

In the European Union, Telegram is also considered to be the favourite service of criminals and part of Durov’s arrest is an attempt by the authorities to force access for the police as part of their crime fighting efforts. The list of accusations of wrongdoing against Telegram is very long.

Durov has also fallen foul of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Telegram has never made a profit. Durov funded its development using the money he earned when the Russian authorities forced him to sell Vkontakte (now VK group), the Russian answer to Facebook. During the testimony to an SEC representative during interrogation in Dubai, said that only 30 people work on Telegram, mostly programmers.

In order to raise money, Durov introduced the TON cryptocurrency and the Gram coin in 2019 and raised $2.3bn from investors, including several Russian oligarchs. However, the SEC objected to the coins, saying they were unregulated securities and Durov was forced to withdraw them again a year later. More recently, Telegram has been issuing bonds on the Moscow Exchange and state-owned VTB Bank is one the biggest investors.

The exchangeable bonds can be converted to equity in the company at a discount should it ever IPO. The company has promised to pay off investors by March 2026.