After his arrest on Saturday 24 August, upon his arrival in France at Le Bourget airport, Pavel Durov asked that French billionaire Xavier Niel, founder of the Iliad group and shareholder of the Le Monde group, be informed of his arrest. Asked, Niel did not deny the information, revealed by Agence France-Presse (AFP), which cited a source close to the matter. “Personal opinions expressed during police custody are not communicated”explains to World the Paris prosecutor’s office.
Telegram’s founder and CEO was arrested under a French search warrant, as part of a wide-ranging investigation into the use of the social network for numerous crimes and offences. He was charged on Wednesday, in particular with acts of “complicity” in the laundering or dissemination of child pornography images.
A person taken into police custody is free to inform the person of his choice; Mr Durov wanted to warn Mr Niel. According to a source who worked for Telegram, the two businessmen have known each other for a long time and like each other. Durov publicly expressed in 2017 his admiration for the model of 42 computer science schools, launched four years earlier by Niel.
Frequent visits to France.
After leaving Russia in 2014, Durov made regular stays in France, where he stayed in large Parisian hotels or at the Antibes villa of oligarch Roman Abramovich. He had also met several times with the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, according to information from WorldDurov, a frequent traveller, had embarked on a tour of several former Soviet republics in recent months. On Saturday afternoon, his plane took off from Baku, Azerbaijan, before arriving in Paris, where Durov had planned a dinner, with whom we do not know.
Durov, who speaks French, had applied for and obtained French nationality in 2021, through the exceptional procedure known as “foreigner emeritus”, which is technically a government initiative, but is often requested by personalities who wish to benefit from it. Telegram explained in 2023 that Mr. Durov had made this request as “ A great admirer of French culture and history, he was greatly encouraged by the political changes implemented since the election of President Macron in 2017.” Before landing at Le Bourget, Durov was unaware that he was the subject of an arrest warrant, a judicial source confirmed to Reuters.
