Durov is ‘too free’ for the West – Lavrov

The Telegram CEO’s arrest proves that the US and EU doesn’t pull punches when dealing with online platforms, the Russian FM has said

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is facing charges in France because he refused to moderate his platform in accordance with Western demands, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed.

Durov was arrested after landing in Paris in late August and charged with multiple offenses, including complicity in “administering an online platform” used by criminal groups to conduct illicit activities, and refusing to cooperate with investigators. The Russian tech entrepreneur, who also has citizenship of France, the UAE, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, was released on a €5-million ($5.55 million) bail last week. He is banned from leaving the country as long as the case against him continues.

During a meeting with students and educators at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Monday, Lavrov suggested that Durov is being persecuted because he “turned out to be too free.” 

The Telegram CEO was “too slow [to react to] or did not listen at all to Western advice about the so-called moderation of his brainchild,” he said.

Durov is not the only tech entrepreneur to face such pressure from Washington and its allies, the minister stressed, noting how the head of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg “had been summoned to the US Senate and agreed to cooperate, as he himself admitted.” 

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“The West does not pull any punches when dealing with other large platforms either,” he added.

What the US and the EU are now doing to Durov is “analogous to their actions related to the abuse of globalization,” Lavrov noted.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said over the weekend that Moscow also had issues with the Telegram CEO in the past, but – unlike Paris – never tried to arrest him.

Holding Durov accountable for crimes committed by other people using his app is the same as arresting the heads of French automobile makers Renault or Citroen because “terrorists also use cars,” Peskov argued.

Durov, who was born in St. Petersburg, formally left Russia in 2014 after law enforcement agencies accused him of refusing to grant investigators access to the communications of terrorism suspects. The dispute was settled in 2020 when the Russian telecoms regulator announced that it had no further issues with Telegram.

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In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in April, Durov insisted that he has repeatedly refused to provide user data to any authorities, including US intelligence services, or to install a surveillance “backdoor” in the app, which has almost a billion monthly users.