In his lengthy message, Durov stressed that if a country is dissatisfied with an internet service, it is common practice to initiate criminal proceedings against the service itself, i.e. against Telegram. Again denying any abuse associated with the app, Durov stressed: “Using pre-smartphone laws to accuse a CEO of crimes committed by third parties on the platform he runs is a misleading approach“.
“But the claims of some media that Telegram is some kind of anarchist paradise are absolutely false,” Durov continued: “We remove millions of harmful posts and channels every day“. The 39-year-old now faces charges related to child sexual abuse images, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions associated with the app. The Russian has also been charged by French prosecutors with allegedly enabling criminal activity on the messaging app. Durov has avoided being held in prison before the case was heard on bail of €5 million and on the condition that he report to the police station twice a week and remain in France.
The spotlight is on Durov’s relations with Russia, yesterday the president also intervened Vladimir Putin. The head of the Kremlin called the initiative of the transalpine authorities against the founder of Telegram unclear. Going into detail, the tsar spoke of a “selective nature”: “I met Durov in Moscow years ago. I know that some countries have had objections because this platform is used in a certain way by some people, some groups that can cause damage with their activities to the economy and state security. But all platforms of this type have such a flaw”. In the last few hours, the vice-president of the Security Council of the Russian Federation also intervened Dmitry Medvedev: in his opinion, Durov could, under certain conditions and under strong pressure, hand over the app’s encryption keys to the French secret services, even if he doesn’t want to. An extremely delicate dossier, which risks not stopping only at the Telegram app…
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