Telegram Messaging App CEO Pavel Durov was Arrested in France While Traveling on his Private Jet.

Pavel Durov, the Russian-French billionaire founder and CEO of Telegram messaging app, was arrested at Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV and BFM TV said, citing unnamed sources.

Durov was traveling in his private jet, and was targeted by an arrest warrant in France as part of a preliminary police investigation, TF1 said on its website. Both TF1 and BFM said the investigation focused on the lack of moderators on Telegram, and police believed the situation allowed criminal activities to run unhindered on the messaging app.

Encrypted Telegram, with nearly a billion users, is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine, and the republics of the former Soviet Union. It is considered one of the leading social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and WeChat.

Telegram did not immediately respond to Reuters’ inquiries for comment. The French Interior Ministry and police did not comment.

Pavel Durov, originally from Russia, founded Telegram with his brother in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with a government demand to shut down opposition communities on his social media platform VKontakte, which he sold.

“I’d rather be independent than take orders from anyone,” Durov told American journalist Tucker Carlson in April about moving out of Russia and looking for a home for his company, which included offices in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco.

After Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has become the main source of unfiltered and sometimes graphic and misleading content from both sides about the war and the politics surrounding the conflict.

The platform has become what some analysts call a ‘virtual battlefield’ for war, used heavily by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his officials, as well as the Russian government.

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