Pavel Durov, the CEO of the messaging app Telegram, recently spoke out about his August 24, 2024 arrest by French authorities. He called the ongoing criminal investigation against him as “legally and logically absurd.”
In a series of posts on X, he stated that the arrest was “unprecedented” and “absurd,” adding that it was unfair and illogical to blame a company’s CEO for what users do on the platform. He also claimed that the French Police ignored French and EU laws and hadn’t sent any of their queries to Telegram via the required legal process.
Durov was arrested last year at a French airport, Le Bourget, and was charged with 12 crimes, including being involved in illegal activities like money laundering and sharing child sexual abuse material through Telegram.
He was formally placed under investigation, and was required to return to France every 14 days, with no appeal date set. He is still under investigation by the French authorities.
Durov stated that even after a year of this “strange arrest,” the French authorities are still struggling to find any evidence of wrongdoing by either himself or Telegram.
Durov’s Arrest Ignites Support for Telegram’s TON Integration
The arrest had sparked significant attention, drawing support from the cryptocurrency community, particularly due to Telegram’s integration with The Open Network (TON). TON’s native token, Toncoin, ranks as the 21st largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Further, Verb Technology, a company that owns more than 8% of Toncoin (a cryptocurrency linked to Telegram’s The Open Network), revealed plans to change its name to Ton Strategy Company.
In March 2025, Pavel Durov was allowed to travel to Dubai, where Telegram’s main office and his family is. A French court decided that he can visit Dubai for up to 14 days at a time, as long as he informs the judge a week in advance. If he wants to travel anywhere else, he needs special permission from a French judge.
Meanwhile, this case has also raised questions about whether the heads of online platforms should be responsible for what users post.
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