Pavel Durov, the CEO of the social media platform Telegram, has been detained in France. He was arrested by French police at the La Bourget airport. This information was reported by British news outlet BBC News on Sunday (August 25).
According to the report, 39-year-old Durov arrived in France on a private jet from Azerbaijan on Saturday night, local time. A warrant for his arrest had already been issued.
The popular messaging app Telegram is accused of violating regulations in France. The claim is that due to the lack of surveillance capabilities, the app is widely used by criminal networks. It is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet Union countries.
Earlier, in 2013, Russian citizen Durov founded the app. It was later banned in Russia in 2018, only to be re-launched three years later. Currently, Telegram has 900 million active users.
