Russian deputies and senators today demanded his release.
French authorities arrested on Saturday evening Pvel Drov, co-founder of Telegramthe encrypted instant messaging platform of Russian origin, as he was getting off his private plane on the runway at Paris-Le Bourget airport, arriving from Azerbaijan, according to local media.
The 39-year-old Franco-Russian billionaire, arrested by the air transport police, had a French arrest warrant issued by the Youth Office (OFMIN) of the National Directorate of the Judicial Police on the basis of a preliminary investigation.
French justice maintains that the lack of moderation on Telegram and the lack of cooperation of Pvel Drov with the authorities, as well as the tools offered by the platformlike disposable numbers and cryptographymake him an accomplice in crimes such as drug trafficking, pedophilia and fraud.
The Telegram co-founder is expected to appear before an investigating judge in the coming hours, where he could face charges that include terrorism, drug trafficking, aiding and abetting, fraud, money laundering and distribution of child sexual abuse material, among other chargesaccording to the Efe agency.
Telegram is an instant messaging application for electronic devices launched in 2013 by Drov and his brother Nikoli as an alternative to the WhatsApp application.
Based in Dubai and translated into over 20 languages, if there is one thing that characterizes Telegram, it is the synchronization to the cloud permanently, something that WhatsApp does not have, so that its users can simultaneously access messages from different devices, including tablets and computers, and share unlimited photos, videos and files (doc, zip, mp3, etc.) up to 2 GB each.
But the platform also offers the robot creation (automatic messages), the setting up secret chats that protect user privacy with proprietary encryption between sender and recipient and the limitation to 200,000 people per group.
For all this – its encryption, the large size of the groups and the possibility of sharing files of any type or size – it is not surprising that the platform has become something unique but at the same time a attractive tool for criminals and extremists.
Actually Telegram has been removed from stores applications or repeatedly blocked by the courts for allowing the exchange of illegal contentand in the case of authoritarian regimes, for encouraging protests by opponents.