Telegram founder Pavel Durov on Monday stated he has returned to Dubai after his gorgeous arrest close to a Paris airport final 12 months tied to a French probe of prison exercise on his app.
Durov – who left his native Russia years in the past after tangling with the Kremlin over free speech – was arrested final August and banned from leaving France.
He was rapidly launched on a $5.6 million bail and required to report back to a police station twice per week.
In a put up on Telegram on Monday, his encrypted messaging app, the tech billionaire stated 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 depart France solely quickly, after an investigating decide days in the past licensed him to depart for “several weeks,” sources instructed French information company AFP.
Final summer time, French authorities stated they charged the 40-year-old tech tycoon with being complicit in pervasive crime throughout the favored messaging app, together with little one intercourse abuse and drug trafficking.
Investigators questioned Durov for 4 days after apprehending him at Le Bourget airport in August, based on the Related Press.
In September, Durov defended himself in opposition to the investigation and argued that he shouldn’t be held accountable for crimes dedicated 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 put up on Telegram on 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 change into an indispensable communication software throughout the Russia-Ukraine warfare.
The messaging app has been utilized by authorities officers to ship out air raid warnings, residents to doc warfare horrors firsthand and as a final information hyperlink between Russia and Ukraine.
Professional-democracy teams around the globe have additionally used Telegram to arrange demonstrations.
However the app has additionally come underneath hearth for being utilized by extremist teams just like the Islamic State, white nationalists and COVID-19 and QAnon conspiracy theorists.
Durov has additionally been the goal of Russian state blacklisting after he refused to close down activist teams on VKontakte – one other well-liked app he based referred to as the Russian model of Fb – regardless of stress from the Kremlin.
The teams — together with one led by the late Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny — had organized protests over the 2011 parliamentary election that claimed a victory for Putin’s United Russia celebration.
The ban, which a Russian state spokesperson referred to as a “mistake,” was lifted hours later.
A month earlier than the blacklisting incident, Durov was reportedly concerned in a site visitors accident that left a police officer barely injured. The tech CEO refused to testify as a witness and as an alternative fled the nation, sources who knew him stated.
Across the identical time, a personal fairness agency linked to the Kremlin purchased a 48% stake in VK – pushing out the founding companions who backed Durov, based on The Moscow Instances.
Durov obtained citizenship in Saint Kitts and Nevis, dwelling in self-imposed exile. He moved himself and Telegram headquarters to Dubai in 2017, and was later granted French citizenship in 2021.
With Submit wires
