Le Pays De France - Telegram chief Durov in French custody after airport arrest

His arrest at the Le Bourget airport outside Paris late Saturday is the latest extraordinary twist in the career of one of the world's most influential tech icons who is not yet 40.

Durov, 39, could have his detention extended beyond Sunday night by the investigating magistrate who is handling the case.

When this initial period of detention ends, this judge can then decide to free him or press charges and remand in further custody.

Russia has accused France of "refusing to cooperate" and fellow tech mogul Elon Musk swept to his defence following the arrest of the billionaire. Durov holds a French passport in addition to other nationalities.

Durov had arrived from Baku, Azerbaijan, and was planning to have dinner in the French capital, a source close to the case said.

He was accompanied by a bodyguard and a personal assistant who always accompany him, added the source, asking not to be named.

France's OFMIN, an office tasked with preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov in a preliminary investigation into alleged offences including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime and promotion of terrorism, another source said.

Durov is accused of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform.

He founded Telegram in 2013 after his first project, the Russian social network VKontakte, ran into ownership difficulties he blamed on the Kremlin.

Telegram has become hugely popular partly due to the ease of viewing and posting videos on its messaging "channels".

But critics accuse it of hosting often illegal content ranging from extreme sexual imagery, disinformation and also services for buying drugs.

- 'Refusing to cooperate' -

Russian authorities said they had demanded access to Durov but had no response from France.

"We immediately asked French authorities to explain the reasons for this detention and demanded that his rights be protected and that consular access be granted. Up to now, the French side is refusing to cooperate on this question," Russia's embassy in Paris said in a statement reported by the Ria Novosti news agency.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow had asked for consular access, saying that as he also had French citizenship "France considers that it is his main nationality".

Musk, who leads the Tesla car group and the X, formerly Twitter, social media, posted the hashtag #FreePavel on X and commented in French, "Liberte Liberte! Liberte?" (Freedom Freedom! Freedom?).

Former US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr said, also on X, that "the need to protect free speech has never been more urgent".

US whistleblower Edward Snowden, who took asylum in Russia, blasted "an assault on the basic human rights of speech and association", saying he was saddened Paris had "descended to the level of taking hostages as a means for gaining access to private communications."

- 'Independence, privacy, freedom' -

A source close to the case expressed surprise that Durov had flown to France with a warrant against him. "Perhaps he had a feeling of impunity," said the source.

Le Bourget is now used by private planes rather than regular commercial traffic. It is also famed as the place the Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West in 1961.

Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, based in Dubai, has positioned itself as an alternative to US-owned platforms, which have been criticised for their commercial exploitation of users' personal data.

Telegram has committed to never disclosing information about its users.

In a rare interview given to right-wing talk show host Tucker Carlson in April, Durov said he got the idea to launch an encrypted messaging app after coming under pressure from the Russian government while working at VK.

He said he then tried to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before choosing Dubai, which he praised for its business environment and "neutrality".

People "love the independence. They also love the privacy, the freedom, (there are) a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram," Durov told Carlson.

He said at the time that the platform had more than 900 million active users.

By basing itself in the United Arab Emirates, Telegram has shielded itself from moderation laws at a time when Western countries are pressuring large platforms to remove illegal content.

Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, which has led to accusations that it makes it easier for false information to spread virally, as well as for users to disseminate neo-Nazi, paedophilic, conspiratorial and terrorist content.

Competitor messaging service WhatsApp introduced worldwide limits on message forwarding in 2019 after it was accused of enabling the spread of false information in India that led to lynchings.

(O.Agard--LPdF)