Pavel Durov, the man behind the messaging service Telegram, has been arrested. The billionaire had traveled to Paris for dinner on Saturday, the French newspaper Le Monde reports. Durov, who was born in Russia and also took French citizenship in 2021, now lives in Dubai. The 39-year-old was arrested at Paris' Le Bourget airport. According to media reports, Durov was, as always, accompanied by his bodyguard and assistant.
The arrest by French investigators is said to involve a range of crimes: from fraud to drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime and the glorification of terrorism, as Le Monde writes, citing insiders familiar with the case. The judiciary accuses Pavel Durov of a lack of moderation and cooperation with investigators in order to combat the criminal use of his messenger. Elon Musk, the owner of X, who has also protested against the moderation of content, described the incident as evidence of “dangerous times.”
Who is Pavel Durov?
Durov, who was born in St. Petersburg in the Soviet Union, is worth $15.5 billion, according to Forbes. The tech entrepreneur founded the encrypted messaging service Telegram in 2013 with his brother Nikolai. According to the Digital Life Design conference website, the brothers come from a family of intellectuals. Durov spoke at the conference in January 2012.
Much of Durov's wealth comes from Telegram, which has 950 million active users and is valued at over $30 billion. Before Telegram, Durov founded a Russian social network called Vkontakte. Durov launched the network in 2006 and sold a 12 percent stake for $300 million in 2015.
Pavel Durov gained worldwide prominence and political problems as early as 2006
Vkontakte made Durov famous around the world: he was hailed in the New York Times as Russia's “biggest celebrity entrepreneur”. In Russia, the site got Durov into political trouble: the founder rejected the Kremlin's demands to obtain data on Ukrainian protest leaders via Vkontakte.
Durov said he was fired from his position as CEO of Vkontakte in April 2014 as state-backed entities sought to control the network. Mail.Ru Group, owned by oligarch Alisher Usmanov, bought the network later that year for $1.47 billion. Usmanov's press service told Business Insider the group had sold Vkontakte. The state-owned insurance company Sogaz is now the owner.
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Durov told the Times that he was forced to leave Moscow in 2014 after a SWAT team showed up at his home. But Durov's conflicts with the Kremlin did not end with Vkontakte.
Pavel Durov is considered an icon of anti-authoritarianism in Russia
In 2018, Telegram was banned in Russia after Durov denied the Kremlin access to user data. In response to the ban, hundreds of people protested, some holding signs depicting Durov as a saint. Two years later, the app was allowed back in Russia.
Today, Telegram plays an important role in the war in Ukraine. Durov vowed to protect Ukrainian users' data in a Telegram post in March 2022. Durov is of partial Ukrainian descent, the post states.
“When I [den Forderungen des Kremls] “When I opposed the move, I had a lot at stake for myself,” Durov wrote. “I stand up for our users no matter what. Their right to privacy is sacred.”
Pavel Durov also launched his own crypto exchange: Fragment
Durov also launched a cryptocurrency wallet called Fragment in 2002. Durov said the wallet “only took 5 weeks and 5 people, including me, to put together.” Durov said $50 million worth of usernames were purchased less than a month after Fragment launched.
In 2017, Durov moved to Dubai and relocated Telegram's operations to an office in Dubai's Media City, Bloomberg reports. The network had previously been based in Berlin. In an interview with Bloomberg in December 2017, Durov said the move to Dubai would provide him with “better opportunities, [sein] “to use money for the benefit of society” since the city does not levy income tax.
According to the Russian edition of Forbes, Durov received citizenship of the United Arab Emirates in February 2021 and was naturalized as a French citizen in August 2021.
In January 2018, Durov wrote on Twitter that it was unlikely that Telegram would ever consider a location as a permanent base.
My yacht, my six-pack: Pavel Durov's active presence on social media
In August 2017, an Instagram post by Durov parodying Russian President Vladimir Putin went viral. Durov's Instagram post, called “Putin Shirtless Challenge,” encouraged users to post photos of themselves shirtless in the style of Putin.
“Two rules of Putin – no Photoshop, no pumping up. Otherwise you are not an alpha,” Durov wrote in the post in August 2017. Over 3,000 posts with Durov's hashtag have been uploaded to Instagram. Although he has 2.5 million followers on X, Durov does not follow anyone – except for a while, Elon Musk.
Although not much is known about Durov's net worth, he is known to occasionally share a photo from a yacht on Instagram. In 2016, Durov shared a photo from the deck of a Lürssen yacht off the Italian coast.
The cost of a Lürssen yacht starts at about $1 million and can go up to $185 million, according to Yacht World. Durov has never confirmed whether he owns the Lürssen yacht in the photo.
In an Instagram post in August 2016, Durov said that while he was not a “fan of huge Lürssen yachts,” he liked the manufacturer's sailing vessel.
Durov posted another photo of a superyacht on Instagram in 2015. And in another 2022 post on his official Telegram account, Durov claimed he does not own private jets, yachts, cars or houses, adding that he is “unlike most billionaires.”
Durov's profile was found on Tinder once in 2017. Bloomberg reported that Durov was “half naked” in his profile. “I'm not looking for anything serious or not,” he wrote in his profile, according to Bloomberg. “Just playing with the app.”
Durov was once married to Daria Bondarenko, whom he met at university, according to Russia Beyond, citing a documentary about Durov by filmmaker Rodion Chepel.
The Telegram founder has a critical attitude towards Silicon Valley
Durov once said that Silicon Valley has a “limited cultural life.” Durov wrote this in response to journalist and YouTuber Yury Dud's film about Silicon Valley. The film has 52 million views on YouTube.
In the post, Durov listed seven reasons why he did not want to move to Silicon Valley: “The US is not the best place to live or run an IT company,” said Durov. “Local programmers are expensive, spoiled and often unable to concentrate on work because they are overwhelmed with suggestions and ideas from outside.”
Durov also described the United States as a “police state” and said he was attacked in San Francisco in June 2015 by thieves trying to steal his phone. Durov is committed to ensuring Telegram is safe for all users, regardless of who they are and what they do.
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, Telegram is the “app of choice” for terror networks like ISIS. However, Durov has so far refused to restrict access to the app or moderate its content to deter certain groups.
“We cannot make messaging technology safe for everyone except terrorists,” Durov said in an interview with CNN in February 2016. “It's either safe or it's not safe.”
Durov is also something of an agitator on his personal accounts. When the Russian state demanded a ban on Vkontakte in 2014, Durov responded with a photo of a dog in a hoodie on Twitter.
When Vkontakte was accused of hosting pornography, he changed his Twitter handle from “VK CEO” to “Porn King,” according to the Calvert Journal. And in 2017, he shared his passport photo on Twitter, writing that it was “oddly appropriate for media articles about terrorists using Telegram.”
Have you had any experience with Telegram or worked for the company? Then contact our reporter Madita Lege confidentially. You can reach her by email at [email protected].
This article first appeared on Business Insider US. Click here to read the original.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/technologie/verhaftet-in-paris-wer-ist-telegram-gruender-pavel-durov/
