In short
- Durov called his arrest of August 2024 ‘legally and logically absurd’ and claimed that the French police have held him about crimes by users he had never heard of.
- The CEO of Telegram has to report to the French authorities every 14 days, despite the fact that he or his platform has not found misconduct.
- Durov remains under judicial supervision in France, requires every two weeks to report, without the professional date still set.
Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, called his arrest by the French police “legally and logically absurd” on Sunday, exactly one year after he had been held four days for alleged criminal activities on his message platform.
In an X -Thread posted A year after his arrest At Le Bourget Airport outside of Paris, the 40-year Technical Mogul revealed that he still has to return to France every 14 days with “not a professional date in sight.”
Since his release of € 5 million bail (US $ 5.8 million) has been Durov allowed to travel Short to Dubai, where Telegram has its head office, but remains under judicial supervision.
Durov was initially locked On accusations with regard to alleged criminal activities on his message platform, of which prosecutors claimed that he was unable to moderate enough.
“Until now, the only result of my arrest is enormous damage to the image of France as a free country,” he tweeted on Sunday.
“These legal steps against the CEO of a platform about user actions emphasize a fundamental tension between legacy Legal Frameworks and the Core Web3 principle of individual sovereignty,” said Jeffrey Ding, chief analyst of Hashkey Group Decrypt.
The case leads to a “broader, worldwide discussion” about the balance between innovation and “legal supervision” in the digital ecosystem, he said.
Durov’s arrest immediately influenced the crypto markets, which caused Toncoin (Ton), the native token of the open network blockchain, closely connected to telegram, plummet While news broke out.
The French authorities held up Durov on charges, including complicity in distributing child pornography, sale of drugs and organized fraud, and said that the coding instruments of Telegram were used without the correct government authorization.
The National Anti-Fraudebureau accused the Platform of Refusal to collaborate with law enforcement requests and not moderating criminal content.
The detention of Durov gave conviction of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and ex-NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, compelling President Emmanuel Macron defend France’s record about free speech.
Durov, however, pushed back against these allegations and claimed that the French police had made procedural errors that unveiled their own incompetence, and “they could have learned the correct procedure simply by Googling or asking it.”
The technical director said that Telegram was easy to reach and said that “they have always responded to any legally binding request from France.”
He added that the ‘moderation practices of his platform join the industrial standards’, and explain: “We will continue to fight – and we will win.”
Kadan Stadelmann, CTO on Komodo platform, told Decrypt That “Governments in Europe are carrying out an attack on privacy by force compliance with platforms that offer users coding and user autonomy.”
He noted that “Russia and Iran Telegram have banned because they had not handed over surveillance keys”, pointing to a pattern in which “governments want to deter developers to develop coded technology that undermines their centralized control”.
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