Paris-Le Bourget Airport, once the main airport in Paris, now only accommodates private and business flights to the French capital. The CEO of the Telegram app, Pavel Durov, was arrested by police there on Saturday. (Source: Reuters)
French President Emmanuel Macron claimed on Monday that the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov outside Paris over the weekend was “in no way a political decision.”
The development came after a French judge extended the prison sentence of the 39-year-old Russian-born billionaire on Sunday, the French daily Le Monde reported.
“I saw false information about France following the arrest of Pavel Durov,” Macron wrote in a statement shared with X on Monday.
“France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, innovation and entrepreneurship,” he said. “It will remain so. In a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms on social media as well as in real life are safeguarded within a legal framework to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights. It is the task of the judiciary to enforce the law in complete independence. The arrest of Telegram's president on French soil took place in the context of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no way a political decision. It is for the judges to rule on the matter.”
Durov was arrested at Le Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday after reportedly landing on a private jet from Azerbaijan, sparking an immediate outcry from free speech advocates, including fellow tech billionaire and X owner Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who have leveled censorship allegations against the media and the Biden-Harris administration.
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Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov during TechCrunch Disrupt at Pier 70 on September 21, 2015 in San Francisco. (Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch/Getty Images)
On Sunday, Telegram released a statement saying Durov had “nothing to hide.”
“Telegram complies with EU laws, including the Digital Services Act – its moderation is in line with industry standards and is constantly improving,” Telegram said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital. “Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe. It is absurd to suggest that a platform or its owner is responsible for the misuse of that platform.”
“Nearly a billion users worldwide use Telegram as a means of communication and as a source of important information,” it said. “We look forward to a speedy resolution of this situation. Telegram is with all of you.”
French national cybercrime and fraud authorities are investigating Durov for alleged lack of cooperation in cyber and financial crimes on Telegram, a police spokesman told Reuters.
French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech in Paris on August 25, 2024. (Teresa Suarez/Pool/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
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The Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement on Monday that the alleged violations include complicity in the sale of child pornography and drug trafficking, fraud, aiding and abetting organized crime transactions and refusing to provide information or documents to investigators when required by law, The Associated Press reported.
Jean-Michel Bernigaud, secretary general of Ofmin, a French police agency responsible for preventing violence against minors, said Durov's arrest was linked to alleged inadequate moderation of content related to sex crimes against children on the platform.
Pavel Durov speaks during the Mobile World Congress at the Fira Gran Via complex in Barcelona, Spain on February 23, 2016. (AOP.Press/Corbis via Getty Images / Getty Images)
“The core of this problem lies in the lack of moderation and cooperation on the part of the platform (which has almost a billion users), especially in the fight against pedophilia,” Bernigaud wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday.
The investigating judge has decided to extend Durov's pre-trial detention beyond Sunday evening, Le Monde reported, citing a source familiar with the investigation. The maximum period of pre-trial detention is 96 hours before the judge must decide whether to release Durov or to bring charges against him and remand him in further pre-trial detention.
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Durov has French and British citizenship. Born in Leningrad in the Soviet Union, he graduated from St. Petersburg State University and left Russia in 2014 after defying government requests to shut down opposition communities on his former social media platform, VK. He has since sold the platform, according to Reuters.
