Telegram founder Pavel Durov on Monday said he has returned to Dubai after his stunning arrest near a Paris airport last year tied to a French probe of criminal activity on his app.
Durov – who left his native Russia years ago after tangling with the Kremlin over free speech – was arrested last August and banned from leaving France.
He was quickly released on a $5.6 million bail and required to report to a police station twice a week.
In a post on Telegram on Monday, his encrypted messaging app, the tech billionaire said he was detained in France “due to an investigation related to the activity of criminals on Telegram. The process is ongoing, but it feels great to be home.”
“I want to thank the investigative judges for letting this happen, as well as my lawyers and team for their relentless efforts in demonstrating that, when it comes to moderation, cooperation, and fighting crime, for years Telegram not only met but exceeded its legal obligations,” he added.
Durov has been allowed to leave France only temporarily, after an investigating judge days ago authorized him to depart for “several weeks,” sources told French news agency AFP.
Last summer, French authorities said they charged the 40-year-old tech tycoon with being complicit in pervasive crime across the popular messaging app, including child sex abuse and drug trafficking.
Investigators questioned Durov for four days after apprehending him at Le Bourget airport in August, according to the Associated Press.
In September, Durov defended himself against the investigation and argued that he should not be held responsible for crimes committed on his app.
“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach,” he wrote in a post on Telegram at the time.
“Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools,” he continued.
Durov’s Telegram has become an indispensable communication tool during the Russia-Ukraine war.
The messaging app has been used by government officials to send out air raid warnings, citizens to document war horrors firsthand and as a last news link between Russia and Ukraine.
Pro-democracy groups around the world have also used Telegram to organize demonstrations.
But the app has also come under fire for being used by extremist groups like the Islamic State, white nationalists and COVID-19 and QAnon conspiracy theorists.
Durov has also been the target of Russian state blacklisting after he refused to shut down activist groups on VKontakte – another popular app he founded known as the Russian version of Facebook – despite pressure from the Kremlin.
The groups — including one led by the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny — had organized protests over the 2011 parliamentary election that claimed a victory for Putin’s United Russia party.
The ban, which a Russian state spokesperson called a “mistake,” was lifted hours later.
A month before the blacklisting incident, Durov was reportedly involved in a traffic accident that left a police officer slightly injured. The tech CEO refused to testify as a witness and instead fled the country, sources who knew him said.
Around the same time, a private equity firm connected to the Kremlin bought a 48% stake in VK – pushing out the founding partners who backed Durov, according to The Moscow Times.
Durov obtained citizenship in Saint Kitts and Nevis, living in self-imposed exile. He moved himself and Telegram headquarters to Dubai in 2017, and was later granted French citizenship in 2021.
With Post wires
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