What is Telegram and why was its CEO arrested in Paris?

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram, was arrested in Paris over the weekend over allegations that its platform was being misused for illegal activities such as drug trafficking and the distribution of child sexual abuse images.

Durov, who was born in Russia but spent much of his childhood in Italy, is a citizen of France, Russia, the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis and the United Arab Emirates. He was taken into custody at Paris-Le Bourget airport in France on Saturday after landing from Azerbaijan.

In a statement posted on its platform, Telegram said it complies with EU laws and its content moderation “meets industry standards and is constantly improving.” Durov, the company added, “has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe.”

Here are some details about Telegram, the app at the center of Durov's arrest.

What is Telegram?

Telegram is an app that allows one-on-one conversations, group chats, and large “channels” through which users can send messages to subscribers. Unlike rivals like Meta's WhatsApp, Telegram's group chats can have up to 200,000 people logging in, while WhatsApp's maximum is 1,024. Experts have raised concerns that misinformation spreads easily in group chats of this size.

Telegram offers encryption for its communications, but – contrary to a common misconception – this feature is not enabled by default. Users must enable the option to encrypt their chats. It also does not work for group chats. This is in contrast to its competitor Signal and Facebook Messengerwhere chats are end-to-end encrypted by default.

Telegram claims to have more than 950 million active users. In France, the app is widely used as a messaging tool, including by some officials in the presidential palace and the ministry behind the investigation into Durov. However, French investigators have also found that the app used by Islamic extremists and drug traffickers.

Telegram was founded in 2013 by Durov and his brother Nikolai. According to Telegram, Pavel Durov supports the app “financially and ideologically, while Nikolai's contribution is technological.”

Before Telegram, Durov founded VKontakte, Russia's largest social network. The company came under pressure amid a Russian government crackdown after mass pro-democracy protests rocked Moscow in late 2011 and 2012. Durov said government authorities demanded that VKontakte shut down online communities of Russian opposition activists. The company later asked the platform to hand over the personal information of users who participated in the 2013 uprising in Ukraine that eventually ousted a pro-Kremlin president.

But Durov sold his stake in VKontakte under pressure from Russian authorities in 2014. He also left the country. Today, Telegram is based in Dubai, which Durov described in an April interview as “the best place for a neutral platform like ours, if we want to make sure that we can protect the privacy and freedom of expression of our users.” Interview with conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson.

Why was Durov arrested?

Durov was arrested in France as part of an investigation launched last month into 12 alleged crimes, prosecutors in Paris said. The alleged crimes include aiding and abetting the sale of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, fraud, aiding and abetting organized crime transactions and refusing to provide information or documents to investigators when required by law.

As of Tuesday morning, no charges had been filed against him. He may be held for questioning until Wednesday evening, when judges must either charge him or release him.

What were the reactions?

In Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on reports of Durov's arrest in France.

“We still do not know what exactly Durov is accused of,” Peskov said on Monday during his daily press conference. “We have not heard any official statements on the matter.”

“Let’s wait until the charges are announced – if they are announced,” Peskov said.

Russian government officials have expressed outrage over Durov's detention, with some calling it politically motivated and proof of the West's double standards when it comes to freedom of speech. The outcry has caused consternation among Kremlin critics: in 2018, Russian authorities themselves tried to block Telegram, but failed and lifted the ban in 2020.

Elsewhere, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, who describes himself as “ Advocates of absolute freedom of speech”, spoke out in support of Durov and posted “#freePavel” after the arrest.

“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the misuse of that platform,” said a Telegram post after the arrest. “Nearly a billion users worldwide use Telegram as a means of communication and as a source of important information. We await a swift resolution of this situation. Telegram is with all of you.”

Does Telegram moderate content?

Western governments often criticize Telegram for its lack of content moderation. Experts say this could potentially open the messaging platform to abuse for money laundering, drug trafficking and the distribution of material related to the sexual exploitation of minors.

Compared to other messaging platforms, Telegram is “less secure (and) more lax in terms of policies and detection of illegal content,” said David Thiel, a Stanford University researcher who has studied the use of online platforms to exploit children at the Internet Observatory.

In addition, Telegram appears to be “fundamentally unresponsive to law enforcement requests,” Thiel said, adding that messaging service WhatsApp “filed over 1.3 million CyberTipline reports in 2023 (and) Telegram did not file a single one.”

In 2022 Germany imposed fines of 5.125 million euros (5 million dollars) against the operators of Telegram for non-compliance with German law. The Federal Office of Justice stated that Telegram FZ-LLC had neither created a lawful way to report illegal content nor designated a body in Germany to receive official notifications.

Both are required under German law regulating large online platforms.

Last year, Brazil temporarily suspended Telegram for refusing to release data on neo-Nazi activities related to a police investigation into the November school shootings.

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Associated Press writers Barbara Surk in Nice, France, and Daria Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this article.