Belgium joins France in investigation into Telegram

It became known that the Belgian authorities have been investigating the Telegram messenger since 2020, and they recently created a joint investigation team with the French judicial authorities. This was stated by the representative of the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office, Eric Vandersippt, during an interview with the newspaper De Standaard.

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«In almost every investigation into, say, illegal weapons trafficking, suspects use Telegram,” a source quoted a representative of the Belgian prosecutor’s office as saying.

Before this announcement, the general public was not aware of the Belgian federal prosecutor’s investigation into Telegram. After a similar investigation began in France, the countries decided to join forces. It is expected that it will be easier for the international investigative team to exchange data and coordinate their actions.

We would like to remind you that at the end of August, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, was detained in France, and a few days later he was charged with complicity in the activities of an organized group in managing an online platform for carrying out illegal transactions, as well as refusal to provide information at the request of authorized bodies. , money laundering, etc. Ultimately, Durov was released from custody, but remained under judicial supervision in France. Durov later said that the IP addresses and phone numbers of Telegram rule violators could be disclosed to the relevant authorities in response to legally valid requests. In October, Durov said that the platform had been disclosing the data of violators since 2018, which complies with the service’s privacy policy in most countries.