Pavel Durov “stuck” in France for a long time, the French prosecutor’s office said

The founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, can linger in France for a long time, since his case will be transferred to the court no earlier than a year later, the Wield resource said with reference to the representative of the French prosecutor’s office, Maylis de Roeck. According to her, it is still too early to discuss any settlement agreement, more than five months after the arrest of Durov in Paris.

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According to Wired, Durov’s arrest was preceded by an investigation in connection with Telegram’s refusal to block the illegal activity on the platform, which, according to the authorities, included fraud, drug trafficking, materials on children’s violence, organized crime and terrorism. According to Libération, only in the French gendarmerie they counted from 2013 to 2024 2460 cases of the lack of Telegram answers to legal requests.

According to Meilis de River, the decision to issue a warrant for Durov’s arrest was made after the prosecutor’s office realized how many investigations were stalled due to the lack of Telegram reaction to requests. According to law enforcement officers, Durov’s silence was tantamount to complicity.

Durov was arrested at the Parisian Airport of Le Burret in August 2024 and a few days later they were released on bail of € 5 million with an obligation to celebrate the police twice a week and a ban on leaving the territory of France.

After the detention of Durov, he expressed his readiness to cooperate with law enforcement agencies, saying that the company would provide at the reasonable request of the IP addresses and the phone numbers of those who violate the rules for using the service. Also, thanks to the measures undertaken, the number of cyber abusions on the Telegram platform was significantly reduced. During the interrogation in court, Durov noted that Telegram is working to improve content moderation algorithms, and monthly from the platform due to violations of laws, “from 15 to 20 million accounts of users” around the world are removed.