The Billionaire, Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has reportedly been arrested at a French airport after disembarking from a private plane.
The Genius Media Nigeria gathered that French outlet TF1 Info, citing an unnamed source, reported that police apprehended the billionaire shortly after his arrival at Le Bourget Airport, just outside Paris, following a flight from Azerbaijan.
Durov, who was traveling on his private jet, was reportedly the subject of an arrest warrant in France. The 39-year-old tech mogul was taken into custody around 8 p.m. local time, accompanied by his bodyguard.
Though born in Russia, Durov has not lived there since 2014, following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas region in Ukraine. He now resides in Dubai, where Telegram is headquartered, and holds dual citizenship in both France and the United Arab Emirates.
In a 2014 interview with TechCrunch, Durov stated, “I don’t have any business in Russia and have no plans to return there. I no longer hold Russian citizenship.”
Durov founded Telegram in 2013 with his brother Nikolai. The messaging app now boasts 950 million active users, allowing them to send messages, photos, and videos, participate in group chats with up to 200,000 members, and broadcast to unlimited audiences.
Telegram, intended as a competitor to WhatsApp, offers features like “secret chats,” where messages are stored on devices rather than the cloud and can be set to self-destruct after a specified time.
Durov, whose net worth is estimated at around £12 billion, stated in an interview earlier this year that Telegram would remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics.”
However, the UK government has urged social media companies like Telegram to do more to prevent extremists from using their platforms for criminal activities. The Counter Extremism Project, a campaigning organization, acknowledged that Telegram has taken steps to reduce its use by terrorists but emphasized that “more can and should be done.”
