The French judiciary, after four days of arrest, released Telegram CEO Pavel Durov. Arrested at Le Bourget airport, very close to Paris, as part of a judicial investigation opened in July into 12 alleged criminal violations.
It would seem to be nonsense, yet when economic interests and geopolitical intrigues are involved, all the cards can be mixed. Indeed, the debate has raged around this news, especially for its platform, Telegram, which has made the privacy flag its own. And it is precisely for having a very strict policy on chat encryption and the non-sharing of content that the accusations against Durov are linked.
Accusations
Of the 12 charges against unknown persons brought by the French Public Prosecutor’s Office, six relate to charges of complicity, from ‘operating an online platform to facilitate an illegal transaction within an organised group’ to ‘organised fraud’, to complicity in the possession of child pornographic images and their distribution and sharing. In addition, complicity in drug dealing, trafficking in programmes to conduct cyber attacks, and fraud.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office is also investigating for ‘refusal to disclose, at the request of the competent authorities, information or documents necessary to carry out and operate wiretaps authorised by law’, money laundering and criminal conspiracy.
Then there are the three counts concerning cryptography: ‘provision of cryptographic services aimed at ensuring confidentiality without a certified declaration’, ‘provision of an encryption tool not exclusively intended for authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration’, and ‘import of an encryption tool intended for authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration’.
From the note issued at first glance, immediately after the night of his arrest, it did not seem clear whether those charges concerned only Durov or Telegram. In fact, Durov had initially been detained as a person of interest in several proceedings on unknown persons with those charges. That is precisely why it was not certain that all of them were related or referable to him.
The context
Perhaps as a Russian spy, this as well as others are the hypotheses raised. Durov has several passports: Telegram’s headquarters is in Dubai and he lives there. He also has Russian, Nevisian and French passports. The latter obtained for entrepreneurial merits in 2018, recognised by Macron himself, who, some time ago, wanted Telegram to be based in France.
But it was in 2014 that he left Russia, after refusing to comply with government demands to close down the communities on VK, his first experiment in social networking, very similar to the second. Then having sold VK, in 2016 Russia blocked Telegram itself. Here it was that going to France, after failing to respond to the gendarmerie on the release of some of the platform’s logs, raised different hypotheses and doubts. Even though the note was in fact only issued a few hours after the arrest, it should be pointed out what the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said: that Durov was arrested as part of an investigation ‘into one or more unknown persons’ – which was opened on 8 July following a preliminary investigation conducted by officers of the National Jurisdiction for the fight against organised crime. And here Laure Beccuau cited ‘an almost total lack of response from Telegram to judicial requests’. Indeed, it would appear that for years the company has ignored subpoenas and court orders sent by the authorities, which have accumulated in a rarely checked company email address, according to a person close to Durov.
An “improbable” paradox
Let us recall the Assange case. This is where the news would have the paradox: the countries for which we very often hear similar stories of political imprisonment are Russia and China. This time, however, it is France, the country of Liberté, égalité, fraternité with the parenthesis of the Olympic and Paralympic Games still open. That is to say, as Tucker Carlson has imbibed in an interview, Durov escaped from Russia in order not to give in to pressure from Putin at the time of his first social network (VK), only to be arrested under pressure from his second social in France.
Arrested near Paris after landing a flight, private, following a preliminary investigation in July. A plane that, as a type, had a tank capacity for a 6-hour trip, and by the time it arrived at the airport, about 5 and a half hours had elapsed. Whether the choice to land in France was an accident or a voluntary act is still a mystery. The fact remains that Durov was certainly aware of the open investigation, as if he had therefore voluntarily turned himself in.
“In a country governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights,” Macron wrote on X, adding that the arrest “was in no way a political decision”. “It is up to the judiciary, in full independence, to enforce the law,” he said.
The European DSA
On the other hand, there are European policies, which undermine the very choices made by Durov and his platform. And it is precisely European regulatory compliance that supports indictable offences. Think for instance of the DSA. The Digital Service Act was created to limit the power of these platforms like the big tech ones, those with more than 45 million users (i.e. about 10% of the European population), and force them to be fully aware of their responsibilities as well as to implement the necessary actions to comply with the regulations it provides. A law that binds them and also the platforms, search engines, social media, e-commerce, marketplaces operating in the travel, cloud and hospitality sectors, to disclose their algorithms.
Telegram, however, said in a statement that it is compliant with the Digital Services Act. And indeed, Telegram has yet to be designated by the EU as a ‘very large’ platform, i.e. those with more than 45 million average monthly users in the European bloc, subjecting the app to stricter monitoring and regulatory adherence.
The alleged offence, however, would not be that of favouring such charges, but that of failing to remove certain content following a court order. Therefore, it would not be a question of pre moderation, but post . That is, once such content is reported, Telegram would not remove them. Moreover, it would not respond to requests from the judiciary . Here, by not cooperating with law enforcement, Durov has been risking the name of collaborator, conspirator for years. Still, arrest would appear to be an exaggerated measure.
Will you end up paying a fine and a few extra filters? Is it something much more serious? Or will it make history? Or is it just a summer tech story?
It should be emphasised that Durov’s platform, unlike all its competitors, is reminiscent of websites in the days of Perly Barrow, in that unlike other social media CEOs, Durov does not act as a publisher but as a manager, thus having no power over content.
What awaits him
With the release from prison, the scenario continues to evolve from the first information circulated after the arrest. Durov was questioned during the 96-hour police custody, as per the procedure that applies to crimes at the centre of the investigation.
Although he was granted parole, his bail cost five million euro and was conditional on him reporting twice a week to a French police station, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement following a hearing that lasted hours. And, after an investigation that is likely to last months or even years, the judges may eventually decide to drop the charges.
The affair would seem to be an international intrigue as far as the diatribes between France and Russia are concerned, but for the matter of the arrest and the Durov charges, one would paraphrase a famous phrase of Edward Snowden’s: ‘to say that one is not interested in the right to privacy because one has nothing to hide, is like saying that one is not interested in freedom of speech because one has nothing to say’, or vice versa. (photo: NickLubushko, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
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