Russia blasts French probe into Telegram boss Pavel Durov

President Emmanuel Macron has pushed back against Russian accusations that Paris wants to limit free speech

Pavel Durov faces allegations of links to organised crime. Getty Images

Relations between Paris and Moscow have hit an all-time low, Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, following France's arrest of Telegram boss Pavel Durov over the weekend at an airport near Paris.

Mr Durov is set to remain in police custody until Wednesday as the French judiciary investigates an alleged failure to curb criminal activities on the app.

The Paris prosecutor's office launched a probe on July 8 on the basis of 12 alleged offences that include organised fraud, complicity in enabling illegal transactions on an online platform, complicity in disseminating underage pornographic material and a refusal to communicate documents requested by the judiciary.

Mr Durov's custody was extended on Sunday and could last for up to 96 hours, which is longer than the usual 24 hours, because the alleged offences are linked to organised crime.

Some of the offences are punishable by more than five years' imprisonment. The investigation is being led by France's Centre for the Fight Against Cyber Crime and the National Anti-Fraud Office.

It is up to the Paris prosecutor to decide whether Mr Durov should be released or presented in front of a judge when his custody ends.

The investigation was opened against a “person unnamed” to give investigating judges more freedom in their probe.

However, it has triggered sharp criticism from the Kremlin, which said on Tuesday that the very serious French accusations against Mr Durov would be viewed as an attempt to restrict freedom of communication unless backed up by serious evidence.

Mr Durov, 39, holds Russian, French and Emirati citizenship. The UAE on Tuesday submitted a request to the French government to provide Mr Durov with all the necessary consular services in an urgent manner, state news agency Wam reported.

Dubai-based Telegram, which has more than 900 million users, has rejected the claims against Mr Durov, saying it was “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform”.

Mr Durov had been listed on France wanted persons' list, which was to be activated only if he set foot on French territory, according to radio station France Info.

He is widely viewed as a libertarian and opposed to government intervention, drawing comparisons to US technology billionaire Elon Musk.

Tool for extremists

The circumstances under which Mr Durov became a French citizen are unclear. Daily newspaper Le Monde reported last year that he had not fulfilled the necessary condition of residing in France for at least five years but may have obtained citizenship through a rare procedure reserved for “distinguished foreigners” that is administered by the Foreign Ministry on a case-by-case basis.

Mr Durov has also openly criticised the French government, saying after the deadly 2015 ISIS attacks against Paris that France was “as responsible” as the extremists for the mass killings.

The attackers used Telegram to communicate while they plotted the assaults in which 130 people died.

The use of Telegram by extremists has caused outrage in Europe, with recent examples this weekend including ISIS sympathisers celebrating the Solingen terror attack in Germany that left three people dead.

Some channels spread footage from the aftermath of the stabbings and commended an attack in Europe, with one claiming Germany should be a target because it “is considered the second largest supporter of the Jews after the US”.

In another incident, a Telegram channel with about 15,000 subscribers praised an anti-Semitic post on X, which received four million views days before a synagogue in France was attacked.

“He is not accused of engaging in paedo-criminal or violent activities himself, but of failing to respond to judicial requests from countries requesting investigations,” Nicolas Arpagian, cyber security strategy vice-president at consultancy HeadMind Partners, told France Info earlier this week.

“He is also accused of failing in moderation, in suspending content, closing accounts or co-operating in providing information to the judicial services. A number of authorities consider that his inertia amounts to complicity.”

Mr Durov has been in the crosshairs of Russia, which blocked access to Telegram for two years in 2018 after he refused to co-operate with the judiciary.

But relations with Russian authorities have since improved and they have rallied to his defence since his arrest at the weekend.

French President Emmanuel Macron has pushed back against Moscow's accusations that Paris wants to curb free speech, describing the claims as “false information”.

“France is more than anything attached to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation and to the spirit of enterprise. It will remain so,” wrote Mr Macron on X.

“In a state governed by the rule of law, on social networks as in real life, freedoms are exercised within a framework established by law to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights. It is up to the justice system, in complete independence, to ensure that the law is respected.”