Telegram founder and freedom of expression advocate released on €5 million bail ━ The European Conservative

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of the encrypted messaging app Telegram, was charged but was released on bail by French judicial authorities on Wednesday evening, August 28.

The Russian-born billionaire was arrested on Saturday after landing in Paris on his private jet. Authorities accused him of allowing criminal abuse of his free-speech-focused social media platform, which his lawyer said was “absolutely ridiculous.”

After a first round of questioning as part of the ongoing investigation into Telegram, which began on July 8, the judge in charge of the case extended Durov's pre-trial detention to a maximum of 96 hours to allow for further questioning by the criminal police, which expired on Wednesday evening.

He was immediately transferred to a Paris court, where authorities conducted another round of questioning. A judge then charged him with six of the 12 counts that were initially under investigation. Durov was released on bail of five million euros, but was not allowed to leave France until the end of his trial and was required to report to police twice a week.

The 12 charges allegedly committed using the platform include drug trafficking, fraud, selling child pornography, hate speech and even spreading “extremist content.” His lawyer, Dmitry Agranovsky, was quick to point out the “absurdity” of the case. “This is like blaming a car manufacturer, a huge car company, for its cars being used for criminal purposes, or blaming it for an accident,” he said.

The French public prosecutor has now filed charges against Telegram's CEO. He is accused of being an accomplice in the management of an online platform “to facilitate an illegal transaction in an organized group,” of refusing to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, and

Complicity in the offence of making available, without legitimate reason, programs or data intended to … distribute, by a gang, images of minors depicting child pornography, [and] drug trafficking.

French prosecutors also announced that a preliminary, undercover investigation into Telegram's complicity was launched in February, and arrest warrants were issued in March for both Durov and his brother and co-founder Nikolai.

“During the consultation, various Eurojust partners, in particular Belgian ones, shared the same observation [about] “Telegram almost completely failed to respond to judicial requests,” the statement said. “This led to the launch of an investigation into the possible criminal liability of the operators of this messaging service.” The case could also have an impact outside the European Union. Forbes The report says that Durov is also a suspect in a Swiss criminal case.

Telegram itself released a statement shortly after Durov's arrest saying its CEO had “nothing to hide” and that the platform's moderation complied with international standards, including the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) – as far as any end-to-end encrypted communications service can. “You can't make it safe from criminals and open to governments,” Durov reportedly said in 2016. “It's either safe or it's not safe.”

In his response to the allegations, Durov’s French lawyer David-Olivier Kaminski repeated this argument after the announcement:

I just want to say that Telegram complies in all respects with European standards in digital matters. It is absurd that charges are being brought against the head of a social network.

As Financial Times Telegram is also reportedly being investigated in Brussels over whether the platform violated EU rules by deliberately underreporting its actual user numbers. The company claims to have about 950 million active monthly users worldwide – but only a few million short of the 45 million threshold in Europe that would allow Brussels to classify it as a Very Large Online Platform (VOLP), making it subject to stricter rules and bureaucratic scrutiny.

Nevertheless, Durov's arrest sparked a wave of outrage around the world, particularly among free speech groups and activists – including Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and Robert Kennedy Jr. – as Telegram has historically been seen as a safe haven for opposition activists, especially in post-Soviet countries such as Russia and Ukraine.

In addition, Durov left Russia in 2014 to found Telegram in the United Arab Emirates, specifically because of pressure from the Kremlin to silence or censor opposition voices on his former social network VKontakte. “I would rather be free than take orders from anyone,” Durov said at the time.

French President Emmanuel Macron, himself an avid Telegram user, tried to stay out of the controversy, claiming on Monday that the arrest was “in no way a political decision” and that the decision was “at the discretion of the judges.”

In fact, Durov even met with President Macron several times before obtaining French citizenship under a special procedure reserved for people who made a special contribution to France in 2021. Macron reportedly even suggested that Durov set up Telegram's headquarters in Paris, but the billionaire refused and stayed with his company in the United Arab Emirates, of which he is also a citizen.

Naturally, Moscow wanted to capitalize on the situation, accusing Paris of “directly trying to restrict freedom of communication and … directly intimidate the head of a large company.” Both Russia and the United Arab Emirates have requested consular access for Durov, but the French police have so far refused to cooperate.