French prosecutors issued preliminary information in a press release on Monday about their investigation into Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, who was suddenly arrested at Paris’ Le Bourget airport on Saturday. Durov has not yet been charged with any crime, but authorities said he was being held as part of an investigation “into an unnamed person” and could remain in police custody until Wednesday.
The investigation, which began on July 8, includes a wide range of charges, including money laundering, violations related to the import and export of encryption tools, refusal to cooperate with law enforcement, “conspiracy” to commit drug trafficking, and possession and distribution of child pornography.
According to a press release, the investigation was opened by cybercrime prosecutors from “Section J3,” in cooperation with France’s Cybercrime Combat Center (C3N) and the National Office for the Prevention of Fraud (ONAF). “Investigators questioned Pavel Durov within the framework of this procedure,” Paris prosecutor Laure Becqueau said in a statement.
Telegram did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the investigation but insisted in a statement posted to its news channel on Sunday that Durov had “nothing to hide.”
“Given that France has several preliminary investigations into Telegram in relation to the protection of the rights of minors and is cooperating with other French investigators, for example on cyber harassment, Durov’s arrest does not seem to me to be such an exceptional move,” said Canel Lavité, a French lawyer specializing in freedom of speech issues.
Lavité noted that Durov is a French national and was arrested on French territory on an arrest warrant issued by a French judge, adding that the list of charges related to the investigation is “extensive,” and that their breadth is not at all surprising in the context of “France’s vague legislative instruments” aimed at balancing content moderation and freedom of speech.
Durov has been a controversial leader of Telegram, primarily because he has not typically cooperated with requests to moderate content on the platform. In some ways, this has positioned him as a defender of free speech against government censorship, but at the same time has made Telegram a hotbed of hate speech, criminal activity, and abuse. Additionally, the platform is often promoted as a secure communication tool, but much of it is open and accessible by default.
“Telegram is not primarily an encrypted messenger; most people use it mostly as a social network, and not with end-to-end encryption,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab. “This means that Telegram has broad capabilities and access to moderate content and respond to legitimate requests. This puts Pavel Durov at the center of any kind of potential government pressure.”
Additionally, many researchers question whether, once users choose to enable Telegram’s end-to-end encryption, it is permanent.
“France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication… The arrest of the president of Telegram in France was made as part of an ongoing judicial investigation and is in no way a political decision,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a social media post on Monday.
However, news of Durov’s arrest has stoked fears that the move could threaten Telegram’s stability and weaken the platform. The case also appears likely to have an impact on long-running debates around the world about social media moderation, government influence, and the use of end-to-end encryption to protect privacy.
Lavite said the case will certainly spark discussion about “the balance between the rights to encrypted communications and free speech on the one hand, and the protection of users, namely content moderation on the other hand,” but she noted that there is a lot of unknowns about the investigation and “there is still a lot of uncertainty.”
As of Monday afternoon, Telegram appears to have seen an uptick in downloads due to the situation, rising from 18th to 8th in Apple’s U.S. App Store app rankings. Global iOS downloads increased 4%, making it the number one social networking app in the French App Store and number three overall.
