Paris:

Telegram founder and chief executive Pavel Durov said Monday that the messaging platform had removed more “problematic content”, weeks after his arrest in France on charges of failing to act against criminals using the app.

Telegram’s search feature “has been abused by people who violated our terms of service to sell illegal goods”, Durov told the 13 million subscribers of his personal messaging channel.

“Over the past few weeks” staff had combed through Telegram using artificial intelligence to ensure “all the problematic content we identified in Search is no longer accessible”, he said.

Durov added that the platform had updated its terms of service and privacy policy to make clear that it would share infringers’ details with authorities — including internet IP addresses and phone numbers — “in response to valid legal requests”.

“We won’t let bad actors jeopardise the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users,” he said.

Durov was arrested on August 24 as he arrived at Le Bourget airport outside Paris on a private jet.

After days of questioning, he was charged with several counts of failing to curb extremist and terrorist content and released on a five-million-euro ($5.6 million) bail.

During the investigation he must remain in France and report to police twice a week.

Durov — who holds Russian, French and United Arab Emirates passports — initially criticised his arrest, but he has since announced steps appearing to bow to Paris’s demands.

On September 6, he said Telegram would alter its “people nearby” feature to present users with “legitimate businesses” rather than “bots and scammers”.

“This year we are committed to turn moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise,” he said at the time.

Durov, an enigmatic figure who rarely speaks in public, has a fortune estimated at $15.5 billion by Forbes magazine, but touts the virtues of an ascetic life that includes ice baths and not drinking alcohol or coffee.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The Russian-born chief of the popular but controversial messaging app was sensationally detained at Le Bourget airport outside Paris on August 24
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The arrest and charging of Telegram founder Pavel Durov is a complex case which raises a lot of human rights concerns, the United Nations said Tuesday (September 3, 2024).

The Russian-born chief of the popular but controversial messaging app was sensationally detained at Le Bourget airport outside Paris on August 24 and then charged with a litany of violations related to the messaging app.

He was also banned from leaving France.

Numerous questions have been raised about the timing and circumstances of Durov’s detention, with supporters seeing the 39-year-old as a freedom of speech champion and detractors as a menace who wilfully allowed Telegram to get out of control.

“This is a very complex case. It raises a lot of human rights concerns,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office.

She told a media briefing that the Geneva-based agency was considering publishing a paper setting out “the parameters within which these situations should be looked at”.

She also cited the recent blocking of X in Brazil, where the country’s supreme court on Monday ratified the decision by one of its judges to suspend the social media platform for alleged judicial transgressions.

Brazil’s suspension of X “also raises similar concerns about states having the duty to ensure that social media platforms comply with the law that freedom of expression is permitted”, but in line with certain restrictions, Shamdasani said.

She called for any restrictions that are imposed to be “proportional” and “in line with international human rights standards”.

“So we are following this case, and it’s difficult for us to get more specific at this point” on the case and the charges against Durov, because the UN Human Rights Office does not have access “to the full information.”

She said states should be able to regulate platforms, which themselves should comply with laws consistent with international human rights law.

“The principles of legality, necessity and proportionality, hate speech, incitement to hatred or violence, harmful disinformation, need to be addressed,” she said.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk wrote to the owner of ‘X’ Elon Musk in November 2022, urging him to make respect for human rights central to the social network.

In an open letter, he warned against propagating hate speech and misinformation and highlighted the need to protect user privacy.

The cause of free speech may have found a new icon in Russia-born tech tycoon Pavel Durov, who was arrested in Paris on August 24. Mr. Durov, 39, is the founder of Telegram, a cloud-based social media and instant messaging service with 950 million active users, which makes it bigger than X (540 million users).

French authorities had a warrant out for Mr. Durov and his brother Nikolai as part of a preliminary investigation into allegations that Telegram was enabling criminality through its ‘hands-off’ approach to moderating content. Mr. Durov, as the owner of Telegram, has been charged with complicity in a range of crimes, including drug trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, organised crime, terrorism, cyberbullying, dissemination of child pornographic materials, and refusal to cooperate with law enforcement. Though he has been granted bail on a bond of €5 million, he has been barred from leaving France and must sign in with the police twice a week.

Telegram, in a statement, has said that “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform”. a sentiment that goes to the heart of a growing conflict between owners of tech platforms and government regulators who want on-demand access to user information. Tech titans, most of whom veer libertarian in their politics, view these demands as violations of user privacy and free speech.

Mr. Durov, who describes Telegram as “a privacy-focussed social media platform” famously said in 2015, “Privacy, ultimately, is more important than our fear of bad things happening,” — a remark that endeared him to free speech evangelists.

EDITORIAL | ​Reasonable restrictions: On Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest and content hosting

Understandably, his arrest has sparked a fierce debate on the fine line between free speech rights and law enforcement. Edward Snowden, the celebrated whistleblower, had no doubt whatsoever, posting on X, “The arrest of @Durov is an assault on the basic human rights of speech and association. I am surprised that Macron has descended to the level of taking hostages as a means for gaining access to private communications.”

The French President defended the arrest, stating, “In a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life.”

It has since emerged that Emmanuel Macron had met with Mr. Durov several times, was instrumental in fast-tracking his French citizenship,, and in 2018, had beseeched him to run Telegram out of France. Mr. Durov refused, preferring authoritarian Dubai to liberal France as Telegram headquarters. Indeed, Mr. Durov’s entrepreneurial career blurs easy stereotypes of ‘authoritarian’ and ‘democratic’. Right now, for instance, while his persecutor is a democracy that takes pride in championing ‘Liberte’, at the forefront of defending his liberty are two authoritarian regimes — Russia and the UAE. While the UAE has asked France to provide all consular services due to a UAE citizen, Russia has warned France against a politically motivated prosecution.

Fall-out with Moscow

Run-ins with governments are not new for Mr. Durov, whose net worth is estimated at $11.5 billion. Born in Soviet Leningrad in 1984, he grew up in Turin, Italy. While in university at St Petersburg, he discovered Facebook, which inspired him to create a Russian social network, VKontakte, in September 2006. It became a runaway success, garnering a valuation of $3 billion and 10 million users by April 2008. But he came under immense pressure from the government to shut down opposition communities. Mr. Durov refused, opting to sell Vkontakte and leave Russia. He then moved to Dubai and founded Telegram, which has become a haven for political dissidents and activists, as well as for terrorists and drug-traffickers — all attracted by the lax moderation on the platform.

In 2018, Russia banned Telegram after Mr. Durov refused to comply with requests to hand over data of Ukranian users. The ban was revoked in 2021, with Russia seemingly reconciled to Telegram’s style of operation. Ironically, Telegram is highly popular in both Ukraine and Russia – two countries at war, but united in their trust of a platform that puts user privacy above compliance with law enforcement requests. Both Ukrainian and Russian governments have been using Telegram for propaganda purposes. If France is building a case for Mr. Durov’s criminal complicity, it cannot ignore the fact that, as a Russian citizen, he refused to sell out Ukrainians to the Russian government.

Mr. Durov’s radical anti-establishment ethos comes through in a 2013 incident where he accidentally ran over a policeman in St Petersburg. In a reference to it, he posted on social media, “When you run over a policeman, it is important to drive back and forth so all the pulp comes out.” His arrest is certainly a departure in terms of holding a tech businessman responsible for the content on their platform. But the backlash it has triggered suggests it might remain an outlier event, unlikely to become the norm.

Paris:

The investigation into Telegram boss Pavel Durov who has fired a warning shot to global tech titans was started by a small cybercrime unit within the Paris prosecutor’s office, led by 38-year-old Johanna Brousse.

The arrest of Durov, 39, last Saturday marks a significant shift in how some global authorities may seek to deal with tech chiefs reluctant to police illegal content on their platforms.

The arrest signalled the mettle of the J3 cybercrime unit, but the true test of its ambitions will be whether Brousse can secure a conviction based on a largely untested legal argument, lawyers said.

In an unprecedented move against a major tech CEO, prosecutors argued that Durov bears responsibility for the alleged illegality on his platform, placing him under formal investigation on organized crime charges. He is suspected of complicity in running an online platform that allows the posting of child sex abuse images, drug trafficking and fraud. 

Durov’s lawyer said on Thursday it was “absurd” for him to be held responsible and that the app abided by European laws, echoing an earlier statement by Telegram itself.

Being placed under formal investigation in France does not imply guilt or necessarily lead to trial, but indicates judges consider there is enough evidence to proceed with the probe. Investigations can last years before being sent to trial or dropped. Durov is out on bail but barred from leaving France.

Brousse’s unit began investigating Durov earlier this year after seeing his app being used for countless alleged crimes, and growing frustrated by the “almost total lack of response from Telegram to judicial requests”, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Wednesday.

Brousse declined to comment.

In an interview with the newspaper Liberation in January, Brousse said her office was overseeing a growing number of probes involving Telegram and rival messaging app Discord, adding that tackling crime on them was “one of my battles”. 

Jason Citron, Discord’s CEO, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Brousse’s J3 cybercrime unit is France’s most important, with a licence to prosecute nationwide. But it also is small, with just five prosecutors, well below the 55-60 cybercrime prosecutors in Switzerland, a 2022 parliamentary report found. With limited resources, they “prioritize the most serious crimes”, Brousse told Le Figaro last year.

Brousse said in a 2022 podcast appearance she wanted to be tough “so cybercriminals believe that if they attack France, they will be judged and punished very severely”.

“We want people to be prosecuted, either in their country … or in France through arrest warrants,” she said.

Her office was used to “extremely sensitive cases”, she added. “Sometimes, legal and geopolitical issues intersect.”

Patrick Perrot, who coordinates AI-assisted probes at the French gendarmerie and advises the Interior Ministry’s cyber command unit, said the J3 had been innovative in seeking to prosecute cases that set an international precedent. 

“I think it shows that you can’t do whatever you want with these platforms,” he told Reuters. “It’s a real question for the future, because these platforms won’t stop multiplying, so the challenge of regulation is essential.”

TOUGH LEGAL GROUND?

Brousse has led the J3 since 2020, which has given her oversight of one of the most important – and controversial – French cybercrime cases ever. 

In late 2020, the J3 took charge of the probe into Sky ECC, which alongside Encrochat was one of the main encrypted communications services used by gangsters to buy drugs and weapons, or murder rivals. A few years earlier, French, Dutch and Belgian police had hacked into their servers, which were housed in northern France, giving French prosecutors jurisdiction over many of the resulting probes. 

There have been more than 6,500 arrests since the takedown of Encrochat in 2020, according to Europol, with the legality of the intercepts challenged in appeals courts across Europe.

Paul Krusky, the Canadian Encrochat boss, was extradited in February from the Dominican Republic to France, where he now awaits trial. Lawyers for Sky ECC’s Jean-François Eap are contesting his French arrest warrant.

Stephane Bonifassi, Eap’s lawyer, said his client was innocent, adding that “Sky ECC was not conceived as a tool for criminals, nor commercialized as such”.

Krusky’s lawyer, Antoine Vey, said his client was innocent.

“The service set up by Paul Krusky, like other services that have enjoyed global success, was only intended to protect the privacy and freedom of exchange of its users, and in no case to support criminal activities,” Vey said in a statement.

Two other French lawyers who have worked on Sky ECC and Encrochat cases told Reuters that these earlier probes gave prosecutors the ambition – and a blueprint – to target Durov.

Robin Binsard, who has fought Encrochat cases at France’s top court, said prosecutors would need to prove that Durov knew and approved of the criminality on the app, calling their argument “totally questionable”.

The fact that Telegram didn’t comply with law enforcement requests “does not automatically make one an accomplice to a criminal project”, he added.

Binsard said it was clear “France is pursuing encrypted messaging providers”, and that other operators of such apps, such as Signal, “should be concerned about whether or not they are in compliance with French regulations. Because the message is clear if they are not, legal action will take place”.

Signal did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

A source at the Paris prosecutor’s office said the Sky ECC probe had no links to the Telegram investigation.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The Kremlin has never made any deals with Telegram boss Pavel Durov, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, adding that he was not aware of any meetings between the tech entrepreneur and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A French judge put Russian-born Durov under formal investigation on Wednesday for suspected complicity in running an online platform that allows illicit transactions, child sex abuse images, drug trafficking and fraud.

Durov’s lawyer said on Thursday it was “absurd” to suggest he should be held responsible for any crimes committed on the app.

“There were no negotiations between Durov and the Kremlin,” Peskov told reporters. “And the fact that he visited Russia, well, he is a Russian citizen, he moves freely, so naturally he visited Russia.

“There were no deals between the Kremlin and Durov,” Peskov said in response to further questions.

Peskov said that as far as he was aware, Putin and Durov had never met.

Russia, after years of pressure on Durov and his tech ventures, has rallied behind him, with Peskov this week saying that the case against him should not become political persecution.

Moscow tried and failed to block Telegram, which has almost 1 billion users, in 2018, and has demanded the platform hand over data in the past, something Durov says he refused to do.

The case has plunged Franco-Russian relations to new lows, according to Moscow, where some pro-Kremlin figures have accused Washington of being behind the detention of Durov, something Paris has denied.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The investigation into Telegram boss Pavel Durov that has fired a warning shot to global tech titans was started by a small cybercrime unit within the Paris prosecutor’s office, led by 38-year-old Johanna Brousse.

The arrest of Durov, 39, last Saturday marks a significant shift in how some global authorities may seek to deal with tech chiefs reluctant to police illegal content on their platforms.

The arrest signalled the mettle of the J3 cybercrime unit, but the true test of its ambitions will be whether Brousse can secure a conviction based on a largely untested legal argument, lawyers said.

In an unprecedented move against a major tech CEO, prosecutors argued Durov bears responsibility for the alleged illegality on his platform, placing him under formal investigation on organized crime charges. He is suspected of complicity in running an online platform that allows the posting of child sex abuse images, drug trafficking and fraud. 

Durov’s lawyer said on Thursday it was “absurd” for him to be held responsible and that the app abided by European laws, echoing an earlier statement by Telegram itself.

Being placed under formal investigation in France does not imply guilt or necessarily lead to trial, but indicates judges consider there is enough evidence to proceed with the probe. Investigations can last years before being sent to trial or dropped. Durov is out on bail, but barred from leaving France.

Brousse’s unit began investigating Durov earlier this year after seeing his app being used for countless alleged crimes, and growing frustrated by the “almost total lack of response from Telegram to judicial requests”, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Wednesday.

Brousse declined to comment.

In an interview with newspaper Liberation in January, Brousse said her office was overseeing a growing number of probes involving Telegram and rival messaging app Discord, adding that tackling crime on them was “one of my battles”. 

Jason Citron, Discord’s CEO, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Brousse’s J3 cybercrime unit is France’s most important, with licence to prosecute nationwide. But it also is small, with just five prosecutors, well below the 55-60 cybercrime prosecutors in Switzerland, a 2022 parliamentary report found. With limited resources, they “prioritize the most serious crimes”, Brousse told Le Figaro last year.

Brousse said in a 2022 podcast appearance she wanted to be tough “so cybercriminals believe that if they attack France, they will be judged and punished very severely”.

“We want people to be prosecuted, either in their country … or in France through arrest warrants,” she said.

Her office was used to “extremely sensitive cases”, she added. “Sometimes, legal and geopolitical issues intersect.”

Patrick Perrot, who coordinates AI-assisted probes at the French gendarmerie and advises the Interior Ministry’s cybercommand unit, said the J3 had been innovative in seeking to prosecute cases that set an international precedent. 

“I think it shows that you can’t do whatever you want with these platforms,” he told Reuters. “It’s a real question for the future, because these platforms won’t stop multiplying, so the challenge of regulation is essential.”

TOUGH LEGAL GROUND?

Brousse has led the J3 since 2020, which has given her oversight of one of the most important – and controversial – French cybercrime cases ever. 

In late 2020, the J3 took charge of the probe into Sky ECC, which alongside Encrochat was one of the main encrypted communications services used by gangsters to buy drugs and weapons, or murder rivals. A few years earlier, French, Dutch and Belgian police had hacked into their servers, which were housed in northern France, giving French prosecutors jurisdiction over many of the resulting probes. 

There have been more than 6,500 arrests since the takedown of Encrochat in 2020, according to Europol, with the legality of the intercepts challenged in appeals courts across Europe.

Paul Krusky, the Canadian Encrochat boss, was extradited in February from the Dominican Republic to France, where he now awaits trial. Lawyers for Sky ECC’s Jean-François Eap are contesting his French arrest warrant.

Stephane Bonifassi, Eap’s lawyer, said his client was innocent, adding that “Sky ECC was not conceived as a tool for criminals, nor commercialized as such”.

Krusky’s lawyer, Antoine Vey, said his client was innocent.

“The service set up by Paul Krusky, like other services that have enjoyed global success, was only intended to protect the privacy and freedom of exchange of its users, and in no case to support criminal activities,” Vey said in a statement.

Two other French lawyers who have worked on Sky ECC and Encrochat cases told Reuters that these earlier probes gave prosecutors the ambition – and a blueprint – to target Durov.

Robin Binsard, who has fought Encrochat cases at France’s top court, said prosecutors would need to prove that Durov knew and approved of the criminality on the app, calling their argument “totally questionable”.

The fact that Telegram didn’t comply with law enforcement requests “does not automatically make one an accomplice to a criminal project”, he added.

Binsard said it was clear “France is pursuing encrypted messaging providers”, and that other operators of such apps, such as Signal, “should be concerned about whether or not they are in compliance with French regulations. Because the message is clear if they are not, legal action will take place”.

Signal did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

A source at the Paris prosecutor’s office said the Sky ECC probe had no links to the Telegram investigation.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

French President Emmanuel Macron was not aware of Telegram owner Pavel Durov’s arrival in France on Saturday and had not been scheduled to meet him, he told a news conference on Thursday during a two-day visit in Serbia.

“I was absolutely unaware of Mr Durov’s arrival in France, and that is quite normal because I’m not aware of the comings and goings of citizens from all over the world, whether they have French citizenship or not,” Macron said.

Durov was arrested by French police after his jet landed at an airport near Paris. On Wednesday, a French judge put Durov, who has French and UAE citizenship, under formal investigation for suspected complicity in running an online platform that allows illicit transactions, child sex abuse images, drug trafficking and fraud.

Macron also defended France’s decision in 2021 to give Durov French citizenship under a rare procedure for high-profile individuals.

“It’s part of a strategy to allow women and men, whether artists, athletes or entrepreneurs, when they make the effort to learn the French language and that they develop wealth, innovation … to be given French nationality,” Macron said.

File picture of Telegram cofounder Pavel Durov
| Photo Credit: AP

A United Arab Emirates official said on Thursday (August 29, 2024) the government was in contact with French authorities and representatives of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, who is a UAE citizen.

A French judge has placed Mr. Durov under a formal investigation after a probe into organised crime on the messaging app and ordered the Russian-born executive not to leave French territory.

“We are in touch with the French authorities about this case and Pavel Durov’s representatives,” the government official said, adding that the UAE prioritises the welfare of its citizens and providing them with assistance was a key priority.

Paris:

The chief of Telegram Pavel Durov on Wednesday was charged by the French judiciary with a litany of violations related to the messaging app but allowed to go free while being banned from leaving the country.

Durov was granted conditional release against a bail of five million euros and on the condition he must report to a police station twice a week as well as remaining in France, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement following an hours-long hearing with two investigating magistrates.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Encrypted messaging app Telegram on Monday said that its CEO Pavel Durov — who was arrested in France — has nothing to hide and “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”

In its first reaction after Russian-born Durov was arrested at the Le Bourget airport outside Paris after landing via a private jet for allegedly failing to prevent criminal activities on Telegram, the company said it abides by the EU laws, including the ‘Digital Services Act’.

“Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe. Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as a means of communication and as a source of vital information. We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation,” said the platform which has more than 900 million active users.

“Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act — its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving,” the company added.

The platform has been a critical source of information for the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. In a rare interview with US political commentator Tucker Carlson in April, Durov said Telegram’s goal is to be a “neutral” platform and resist requests from governments to moderate.

If convicted, Durov faces up to 20 years in prison. According to multiple reports, he was arrested on several charges which involved alleged spread of criminal activity on Telegram which has about 900 million active users.

The billionaire lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and holds dual citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). An entrepreneur with at least $15.5 billion in his kitty, he left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to ban opposition communities on his VKontakte social media platform.

Russia’s embassy in France is taking “immediate steps” to clarify the situation. Telegram offers end-to-end encrypted messaging and users can also set up “channels” to disseminate information quickly to followers.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)