Billionaire founder and chief executive of the Telegram messaging app Pavel Durov was arrested at an airport outside of Paris on Saturday evening as part of an investigation into moderation of criminal activity on the platform, French media reports.
Telegram is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union and is ranked as one of the world’s major social media platforms.
Russian-born Durov founded the service in 2013 and later left Russia after he refused to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform in 2014.
TF1 and BFM reported Durov was travelling from Azerbaijan on his private jet and that he had been targeted with an arrest warrant as part of a preliminary police investigation into a lack of moderators on the platform.
Police alleged this situation allowed criminal activity to spread unfettered on the messaging app.
Telegram has become a main source of information after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Unfiltered — and sometimes graphic and misleading content — from both sides of the war and the politics surrounding the conflict have been disseminated on the service.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his official employed the app as a preferred means of communication, with the Kremlin and Russian government also using it to disseminate news.
Durov, who Forbes estimated to have a net worth of NZD $24.85 billion, previously said some governments had sought to pressure him but the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics”.