French authorities arrested Pavel Durov, co-founder of Telegram, the Russian-based encrypted instant messaging platform, on Saturday night as he disembarked from his private plane on the runway at Paris-Le Bourget airport from Azerbaijan, according to local media reports.
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The 39-year-old Franco-Russian billionaire, who was arrested by the Gendarmerie de Transport Aéroports, had a French arrest warrant issued by the Office for Minors (OFMIN) of the National Directorate of Criminal Investigation on the basis of a preliminary investigation.
The French justice system maintains that Lack of moderation on Telegram and lack of cooperation from Pavel Durov with the authorities, together with The tools the platform offers, such as disposable numbers and encryption, make it complicit in crimes such as drug trafficking, pedophilia and fraud.
The Telegram co-founder is expected to appear before an investigating judge in the coming hours when could face charges including terrorism, drug trafficking, complicity, fraud, money laundering, and distribution of pedophile content, among other charges, according to French media reports.
Telegram is an instant messaging application for electronic devices launched in 2013 by Durov and his brother Nikolai as an alternative to the WhatsApp application.
Based in Dubai and translated into more than 20 languages, Telegram is characterized by its permanent cloud synchronization, something that WhatsApp does not have, so that its users can access messages from different devices at the same time, including tablets and computers, and share an unlimited number of photos, videos and files (doc, zip, mp3, etc.) of up to 2 GB each.
But the platform also offers the creation of bots (automatic messages), the implementation of secret chats that protect users’ privacy with exclusive encryption between the sender and the receiver and the limitation of up to 200,000 people per group.
Given all of this – its encryption, the large size of groups and the ability to share files of any type or size – it is no wonder that the platform has become something unique but also an attractive tool for criminals and extremists.
In fact, Telegram has been removed from app stores or blocked by courts on several occasions for allowing the exchange of illegal content, and in the case of authoritarian regimes, for encouraging protests by opponents.
EFE
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