The Chief Executive Officer of Telegram Pavel Durov, who was arrested Yesterday at a Paris airport for offences related to his popular messaging app is to appear in court Sunday, sources told AFP.
According to AFP report, Durov is said to be facing a 20-year jail term if convicted.
Local sources that Durov, 39, had been travelling on his private jet from Azerbaijan and that a French arrest warrant targeted him as part of a preliminary investigation.
France’s OFMIN, an office tasked with preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov in a preliminary investigation into alleged offences including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime and promotion of terrorism, one source said.
The Franco-Russian billionaire is also accused of not taking actions to tackle the harmful use of Telegram.
An investigators told AFP they were surprised Durov entered France despite the warrant against him, adding “enough of Telegram’s impunity”.
Meanwhile, the Russian embassy in France has demanded consular access to Durov and demanded that his rights be ensured, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Sunday.
Telegram which has close to one billion users was created by Durov and his brother in 2013 in Russia.
Russia began blocking Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to comply with a court order to grant state security services access to its users’ encrypted messages.
Reacting to Durov arrest, owner of X (formerly Twitter) Elon Musk, posted a hashtag #FreePavel and commented in French, “Liberte Liberte! Liberte?” (Freedom Freedom! Freedom?).
Also, Former US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr said, tweeted, “the need to protect free speech has never been more urgent”.
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