The world come to shock when they come across with the news that Telegram Founder is arrested. Even Elon Musk is also very surprised of his arrest in France. After coming from Azerbaijan, Durov was detained on Saturday at the airport in Paris-Le Bourget.
Durov, 39, a native of St Petersburg, Russia, co-founded VKontakte, one of the country’s most well-known social media networks, in 2007. He’s been likened to Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook.
He made news throughout the world in 2013 when he made a public employment offer to Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency and whistleblower.
Earlier this year, in an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, Durov stated that he was under pressure to provide Russian officials with information from 2014 accounts of pro-democracy activists in Ukraine, but he refused.
Durov sold his interest in VKontakte in 2014 and left the country as the Russian government strengthened its hold on the internet and President Vladimir Putin’s allies began to seize control of the platform.
He was arrested “for offenses alleged to have been conducted on Telegram, ranging from fraud, to drug trafficking, cyberbullying and organized crime, including promoting terrorism and fraud,” as per reports.
Although politicians in the US and the EU have called for public hearings with executives of digital companies and penalized other social media platforms for breaking their laws, there is little evidence that these countries have detained prominent figures in the information industry.
A senior Facebook official was detained in Brazil in 2016 as a result of the firm withholding information from WhatsApp pertaining to a drug trafficking inquiry. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook’s parent business, which changed its name to Meta in 2021.
While there is reports that a girl has filed a FIR against the Telegram Founder and there is less news what is the charges for which he has been arrested.