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Telegram CEO Pavel Durov made his first public statement on Thursday since being detained by French authorities last month.
In a lengthy post on his Telegram channel, Durov said the arrest came as a surprise.
“After arriving in Paris last month, I was interrogated by police for four days. I was told that since the French authorities had not received a response from Telegram, I may be responsible for other people’s illegal use of the app,” Durov wrote.
But Durov said authorities could have contacted Telegram and asked for help if they had wanted to.
“Telegram has an official representative in the EU and accepts and responds to EU requests,” he wrote, adding that he had also helped French authorities “establish a hotline with Telegram to counter the terrorist threat in France.”
I am still trying to understand what happened in France. But we are hearing the concerns. I have made it my personal goal to prevent abusers of the Telegram platform from interfering with the future of our over 950 million users.
My full post is below. https://t.co/cDvRSodjst
— Pavel Durov (@durov) September 5, 2024
Durov was arrested by French police on August 24 after arriving in Paris on a private jet.
The Russian-born entrepreneur received preliminary charges just a few days later, on August 28. Durov is accused of distributing child sexual abuse material on Telegram and participating in drug trafficking.
Durov, who gained French citizenship in 2021, has since been released from detention but has not been allowed to leave France.
“If a country is dissatisfied with an internet service, it is customary to file a lawsuit against the service itself,” Durov wrote on Thursday.
“Using pre-smartphone law to sue CEOs for crimes committed by third parties on platforms they control is the wrong approach. Building the technology is hard enough.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said on August 26 that Durov’s arrest was “It’s not a political decision at all.”
After the arrest of Pavel Durov, we came across some misinformation about France.
France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, innovation and entrepreneurship – and this will continue to be the case.
In a nation governed by the rule of law,…
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) August 26, 2024
“The arrest of the president of Telegram on French territory was carried out as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. This is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to decide,” Macron said in a post on X.
Durov said Telegram recognizes the difficulty of balancing privacy and security and is “in discussions with regulators to find the right balance.”
“Sometimes we are unable to agree with a country’s regulators on the appropriate balance between privacy and security. In those cases, we are ready to leave the country,” he wrote, adding that Telegram had been banned in Russia and Iran for not following instructions from local authorities.
Telegram is by no means perfect, but it is by no means a “paradise of chaos,” Durov said on his channel.
“Telegram’s rapid growth to 950 million users has created growing pains that make it easier for criminals to abuse the platform, so I’ve made it a personal goal to significantly improve this,” he wrote in the post, adding that more details would be announced soon.
“Thank you again for all your love and memes,” Durov added.
A Telegram representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.