For the first time since his arrest in France on August 24, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov publicly addressed his detention and subsequent charges for not cooperating with French authorities during the investigation of a serious crime like drug trafficking, child pornography, or extortion.
The investigators blamed Telegram for not even responding to their calls for cooperation. However, Durov says the complaints were surprising:
“Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests. Its email address has been publicly available for anyone in the EU who googles ‘Telegram EU address for law enforcement’.
“The French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance. As a French citizen, I was a frequent guest at the French consulate in Dubai. A while ago, when asked, I personally helped them establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France.”
Furthermore, Durov went on to complain about the fact that the charges were pressed personally against him as the CEO of the company. The Russia-born billionaire said the established practice is to start a legal action against the company. He thinks the French prosecutors took a “misguided approach” which will discourage innovators from building new tools, knowing they can be personally held responsible for their potential abuse by third parties.
Despite these claims, Telegram is well known for not cooperating with governments, law enforcement, and journalists. However, Durov disagrees with the public image of “anarchic paradise” and says Telegram sometimes just “can’t agree with a country’s regulator on the right balance between privacy and security.”
Telegram has roughly 950 million active users and Durov admits the abrupt increase in user base caused some “growing pains” that allowed the platform to be abused by criminals more easily:
“That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.”
Durov hopes the situation will result in making the social networking industry safer and stronger, his case in France is still ongoing, though. He had to pay 5 million euros to avoid prison while awaiting trial, and until then he can’t leave the country.