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Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is heading to court for a possible indictment after being released from police custody, authorities in France said on Wednesday. “An investigating judge has ended Pavel Durov’s police custody and will have him brought to court for a first appearance and a possible indictment,” according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office that was quoted in an Associated Press article.
Durov was arrested in Paris on Saturday and questioned by police for several days. The French investigative judge will “decide whether to place him under formal investigation following his arrest as part of a probe into organized crime on the messaging app,” Reuters wrote today.
“Being placed under formal investigation in France does not imply guilt or necessarily lead to trial, but indicates that judges consider there is enough to the case to proceed with the probe. Investigations can last years before being sent to trial or shelved,” Reuters wrote. The judge’s decision on a formal investigation is expected today, the article said.
On Monday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau issued a statement saying Durov was arrested “in the context of a judicial investigation” into a “person unnamed.” The wording leaves open the possibility that the unnamed person is someone else, but the prosecutor’s statement listed a raft of potential charges that may indicate what Durov could be charged with.
Police were allowed to hold Durov for up to 96 hours under “the applicable procedure for organized crime offenses,” the statement said. That 96-hour period was due to expire today.
Three potential charges are related to encryption. Those charges are “providing cryptology services aiming to ensure confidentiality without certified declaration,” “providing a cryptology tool not solely ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration,” and “importing a cryptology tool ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration.”
Under French law, providers of cryptology must make declarations to ANSSI, the country’s cybersecurity agency.
Telegram offers a mix of private messaging and social network features. Telegram messages do not have end-to-end encryption by default, but the security feature can be enabled for one-on-one conversations.
French authorities also reportedly issued an arrest warrant for Durov’s brother and fellow Telegram co-founder, Nikolai. Warrants for both men were issued in March, according to Politico.
Focus on child sex abuse material
Other possible charges listed in the prosecutor’s statement seem to relate to a lack of moderation on Telegram and a refusal to cooperate with law enforcement. Possible charges include complicity in possessing and distributing “pornographic images of minors” and complicity in drug trafficking.
The prosecutor also cited possible charges of complicity in “web-mastering an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction in organized group,” and “refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law.”
In response to Durov’s arrest, Telegram said it follows the law and industry standards on moderation and called it “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”
Several news reports this week focused on Telegram’s apparent refusal to join child protection schemes used by other social networks. “The app is not a member of either the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) or the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)—both of which work with most online platforms to find, report and remove such material,” the BBC wrote.
Benjamin Bull, general counsel for NCMEC, told NPR that “you’ll find child pornography, CSAM, on X, on TikTok, on all of the major Internet platforms. But Telegram is a world unto itself.” Bull said that “Telegram has refused to cooperate with us. The more we follow up with them, the more that they refuse to respond. They feel like they’re above the law. They feel like they can do whatever they want.”
