[ad_1]
PARIS (Reuters) – Pavel Durov, billionaire founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested on the Bourget airport exterior Paris on Saturday night, TF1 TV and BFM TV mentioned, citing unnamed sources.
Telegram, notably influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the previous Soviet Union, is ranked as one of many main social media platforms after Fb, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat. It goals to hit one billion customers within the subsequent yr.
Based mostly in Dubai, Telegram was based by Russian-born Durov. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to adjust to authorities calls for to close down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he bought.
Durov was travelling aboard his non-public jet, TF1 mentioned on its web site, including he had been focused by an arrest warrant in France as a part of a preliminary police investigation.
TF1 and BFM each mentioned the investigation was centered on an absence of moderators on Telegram, and that police thought-about that this example allowed prison exercise to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
Telegram didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark. The French Inside Ministry and police had no remark.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has grow to be the principle supply of unfiltered – and generally graphic and deceptive – content material from either side in regards to the warfare and the politics surrounding the battle.
The app has grow to be most popular technique of communications for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his officers. The Kremlin and the Russian authorities additionally use it to disseminate their information. It has additionally grow to be one of many few locations the place Russians can entry information in regards to the warfare.
TF1 mentioned Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at round 20:00 (18:00 GMT).
Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, mentioned some governments had sought to strain him however the app, which has now 900 million lively customers, ought to stay a “impartial platform” and never a “participant in geopolitics”.
Russia’s embassy in France informed the Russian state TASS information company that it was not contacted by Durov’s crew after the stories of the arrest, nevertheless it was taking “quick” steps to make clear the state of affairs.
Russia’s consultant to worldwide organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and a number of other different Russian politicians had been fast to accuse France of performing as a dictatorship.
“Some naive individuals nonetheless do not perceive that in the event that they play roughly seen position in worldwide data house it isn’t secure for them to go to international locations which transfer in the direction of rather more totalitarian societies,” Ulyanov wrote on X.
A number of Russian bloggers known as for protests at French embassies all through the world at midday on Sunday.
(Reporting by Ingrid Melander and Gilles Guillaume in Paris, and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Modifying by David Gregorio)
[ad_2]
Source
