Telegram founder breaks silence, calls accusations ‘wrong’

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has broken his silence eight days after being charged by French authorities.

On his personal Telegram channel, amidst thank-yous, hearts and thumbs-up emojis, Durov defiantly refuted claims that his messaging platform is “an anarchic paradise” and slammed the French accusations as “wrong.”

“If a country is dissatisfied with an internet service, the standard practice is to take legal action against the service itself. Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to accuse a CEO of crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is the wrong approach.”

While the Russian-born tech billionaire acknowledged that Telegram is “not perfect,” he maintained that the company has deleted millions of posts and is busy fixing protocols to make the platform “safer and stronger.”

Telegram has seen tremendous growth since its founding in 2013. It now has 950 million users worldwide. Durov attributed the problem to “growth issues that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”

The 39-year-old French and UAE citizen was charged on August 28 in Paris with multiple counts, including disseminating images of child abuse, drug trafficking and disobedience to the law. He was ordered to pay bail equivalent to $5.5 million and placed under judicial surveillance. He is also not allowed to leave the country.

In Thursday’s brief Telegram post, Durov added details of what happened in the days following his arrest in Paris in late August.

“Last month, after arriving in Paris, I was interviewed by the police for four days. I was told that I could be held personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities had not received a response from Telegram.”

Last week, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement outlining the broad charges that Telegram exhibited an “almost total failure to respond to judicial requests.”

Durov rejects the charges and accusations and says in his post:

“Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and responds to EU requests” and “French authorities had numerous ways to contact me for assistance.”

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