Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov said he has arrived back in Dubai after French prosecutors apparently rescinded a travel ban that they imposed after he was arrested in Paris in August 2024.
Reports over the weekend suggested that he had been allowed to leave France.
On March 17, Durov wrote on his Telegram channel: “As you may have heard, I’ve returned to Dubai after spending several months in France due to an investigation related to the activity of criminals on Telegram.
“The process is ongoing, but it feels great to be home.
“I want to thank the investigative judges for letting this happen, as well as my lawyers and team for their relentless efforts in demonstrating that, when it comes to moderation, cooperation, and fighting crime, for years Telegram not only met but exceeded its legal obligations.”
Telegram has about 1 billion users and is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine, and other former members of the Soviet Union.
Durov’s arrest fanned debate over the boundaries of free speech and law enforcement on internet platforms and further strained relations between Paris and Moscow amid the war in Ukraine.
X owner Elon Musk reposted Pavlovski’s post.
Musk has previously said, “Moderation is a propaganda word for censorship.”
Durov, who has dual French and Emirati citizenship, and his brother Nikolai, an encryption expert, founded Telegram in 2013.
Telegram ‘Played the Game’
On March 17, Maud Marian, a Paris-based defense lawyer, told The Epoch Times that it was not unusual at this stage of the investigation for the travel ban to be dropped.“It means the charges are not as serious as the judge initially thought,” Marian said.
She said she thought that Durov had co-operated with the investigation but added, “I am not sure if he gave information or access to the network or just put some rules in place.”
But Marian said Telegram had certainly “played the game.”
At the time of his arrest, Telegram had been growing in Western Europe and North America and was ranked as one of the world’s biggest social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and WeChat.
Among its millions of users were extremists such as ISIS adherents, drug traffickers, and pedophiles.
“We have urgent hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster.”
In August 2024, Telegram, which is headquartered in Dubai, said its moderation was “within industry standards and constantly improving.”
In its statement at the time, the company said: “Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe. It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”
At the time of Durov’s arrest in summer 2024, his lawyer David-Olivier Kaminski told French media, “It’s totally absurd to think that the person in charge of a social network could be implicated in criminal acts that don’t concern him, directly or indirectly.”
On March 17, Durov concluded his statement on Telegram by saying, “I’m also deeply grateful for the millions of people around the world who have shown their support throughout this unexpected journey—it has meant a lot.
“There is nothing our billion-strong community can’t overcome.”
The Epoch Times contacted the Paris prosecutor’s office for comment but didn’t receive a response by publication time.
