Pavel Durov reveals his August 2023 arrest in France—four days in a windowless cell after police ignored Telegram’s data-sharing compliance via Belgium, detaining him on 16 charges despite no prior record. Held without legal access, he calls the detention politically motivated, tied to Telegram’s refusal to implement surveillance backdoors, and compares it to holding leaders accountable for all crimes in their country. Now under judicial control eight months later, Durov denies wrongdoing, criticizes France’s encryption-banning bill as counterproductive, and warns of global surveillance risks like the U.S.’s secret gag orders. His case exposes tensions between privacy and state control, leaving his future in France uncertain despite hopes for travel freedom. [Automatically generated summary]
I mean, those of us who know you and who have followed you looked at our phones one morning in August, I think, and it was, Pavel Durev disappears in France!
Arrested!
And then, you know, no one heard from you for several days.
It was kind of, it was actually kind of a pivot point in the way I understand Europe, speaking for myself.
So if you don't mind, I don't think you've done any interviews since then.
So, yeah, and then I was put into a car with a small motorcade, with police cars, with sirens.
Which is funny because in the previous countries that I visited, And here in France, there was certain consistency, so I was good in the same way, so to say.
Yeah, I wasn't allowed to contact anyone except for my assistant, who I asked to find me some lawyers.
And reach out to certain friends that I have and try to understand what was going on.
And then I spent four days in police custody, the building in south of Paris that is, I think, run by the customs police officers or department, whatever.
So I understood that they were worried about the alleged lack of response from Telegram towards the judicial requests coming from France, which turned out to be not true.
Because we've never received a single legally binding legal request coming from France.
So I was even more confused.
And I asked the French policeman, why haven't you been following the European law and serving your legal requests in the way prescribed by this law?
It's defined by the Digital Services Act.
It's there.
You can Google the process.
Read the privacy policy of Telegram.
It's easily accessible on the website.
So why didn't you do it?
And they didn't answer, but thanks God they started to do it.
And then they started to receive responses helping them to identify criminal suspects, meaning we would disclose IP address and phone number of people who were suspects in criminal investigations when we received court orders.
Signed by a judge.
Right.
And this was something that we had in place since a year ago before that.
So it's not something that the French have forced us to do.
It's something that we already had in place.
We had a company in Belgium processing these requests.
Other countries have successfully been using this process.
But because this is a normal thing that's already taken its process that everyone recognizes and it's been ongoing, you must be very confused as to why you're being held in this jail that they're not calling a jail.
I stepped off an airplane and a bunch of cops showed up, took my phone away and threw me in the back of a car and took me to a cell, even though they pretended it was not a jail, but wouldn't let me out and lock the door for four days without being able to contact my family.
Okay, but just for perspective, so you've got a billion users.
It's a multi-billion dollar company.
You started the company.
You own the company.
It's a huge company.
It's one of the biggest social media companies in the world.
And so there's a process.
So if they think that Telegram is doing something wrong, they send letters to your general counsel or maybe get your phone number, which I'm sure they can pretty easily get.
French intelligence, I'm sure, has everybody's phone number.
And just call you and tell you.
I've never heard of a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company getting arrested at the airport on grounds like this.
Yeah, I'm not from France originally, but I have certain ties to France, and I was awarded, so to say, this citizenship for using a specific process, which took several years, but I didn't cut any corners.
I had to pass the French exam test.
I had to do certain things that you'd normally do.
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Just for perspective, those who don't know your story, I won't tell the whole story.
It's an amazing story.
We did an interview with you maybe a year and a half ago in which you told your story.
You're Russian, as people can probably hear in your voice, and sound like you're pretty happy in Russia, successful in Russia.
Monetizing Without Extracting Personal Data00:03:41
We came up with ways to monetize Telegram without having, To abuse people's personal data this way.
So Telegram became profitable last year, and very profitable, more than half a billion dollars in profit, without having to rely on methods like this, when you have to extract personal data and then use it for targeting ads, for example.
We have a very successful paid subscription.
Service on Telegram.
We monetize in ways that are consistent with our values.
So it's growing very fast and we're very happy with what we are.
We're very proud with what we do.
Because if you look at any mobile messaging app right now, and we're number two after you can guess which other app.
We're the second most popular messaging app in the world.
But most of the features that you use on a modern messaging app First appeared, first were created by Telegram.
And then they were borrowed.
We came up with a list of like 100 such features.
And those are not like small things.
Those are basic things that you know in every modern messaging app.
Like the way you respond to messages, the way you share links, the way you share documents, the text formatting.
Many, many, many, many things.
Like dozens of those.
first appeared on Telegram and then three to eight years after they've been copied by our rivals, one of which is larger than Telegram and others are smaller.
because people don't know my story right people not everybody watched our last interview and uh not everybody had where was the out so i was well, I know you, and obviously I like you, and I like what you're doing.
That's what makes the situation so complicated, because we have to look at the instances such as this one, regardless of which jurisdiction I was born in, which jurisdiction is conducting this investigation.
I think so, but it wasn't the focus of their questioning.
Most questions were about the way Telegram operates, as if it's some kind of mystery.
We're a big company, we're audited by a big four.
We work with the biggest financial institutions.
We're a big company and we spend millions of dollars every quarter on legal compliance.
So we pay to law firms to receive the best advice in order to make sure we don't violate laws anywhere and we operate in almost 200 countries.
So it was very, very surprising for me to...
And then when I learned more about it, I realized that we did actually nothing wrong because the law is very clear in describing the process that should be followed in order for this request to be processed.
A traveling ability, so to say, which is called judicial control.
Judicial control is when you can't leave the country freely, because there is still investigation going on, and you're one of the suspects or the suspect.
I was still being allowed to go to Dubai, and I returned last week from Dubai, and I will be going to Dubai later this week, but it's a very, very restricted, controlled process still.
So no one's actually, despite the headlines that flooded the world in August when you were arrested, detained, whatever they're calling it, put in a cell.
You were not involved in kiddie porn, drug sales, organized crime, arms sales.
I can't even remember, but like the worst crimes in the world.
No one is actually claiming you were involved in those crimes, correct?
It'd be like saying to Donald Trump, there are 350 million people in America.
You know, one-third the number of users you have, and some of them are using kiddie porn or selling drugs or, you know, organized crime, and we're putting you in jail for it.
In the US, you have a process that allows the government to actually force any engineer in any tech company to implement the backdoor and not tell anyone about it with using this process called the gag order.
I asked my lawyers, the US lawyers, what is this thing called the gag order?
And they explained it to me and how it works and how it could potentially be applied.
So I decided maybe not the best place for a privacy-oriented platform.
But here in France, we really don't know because there are a lot of conspiracy theories about it.
At first, I thought I also started to be concerned.
What is this about?
But then, when the French police and the French judges started to send their requests in accordance to the European law, to Telegram, and receive their identification data, meaning the IP address of criminal suspects, they seemed to become very happy.
They expressed their joy in the press.
They said, "Oh, Telegram is now cooperating." All of a sudden, Can I ask you to pause?
But here it's catching up because last month the Senate here in France passed a law basically banning encryption.
This law was forcing all messaging app providers to implement the backdoor for the French law enforcement to fight crime.
The problem here was there is no such thing as an exclusive backdoor.
If you implement the backdoor, technically other actors are able to exploit it.
And it could be foreign agents, it could be hackers, it could be anyone.
So that law would have put millions of people or tens of millions of French citizens in danger.
Their private messages would have been exposed.
The criminals, however, would have instantly switched to niche, smaller apps, not mainstream apps.
And if the government would try to ban these apps, they would switch to VPNs.
They would even become more efficient in hiding their traces.
So the criminals would experience zero problems if that law is passed.
It's the law-abiding citizens who would...
And nobody was talking about it.
I asked my French friends, like, have you heard about this law?
They were completely unaware.
And luckily, the National Assembly here in France shot that bill down.
So it didn't pass this time.
But if you look at the new project by the EU, by the European Commission, published in early April, And that raises many serious questions because no country in the world banned encryption so far.
Even the places that you would consider authoritarian places.
For reasons that I just described, it's just a huge threat for the entire population.
But it was also a sign that, again, in my view, this investigation was not based on A thorough analysis of what Telegram represents and what the goals of the company are.
And again, there has been no attempt and they didn't even try to solve this in a more traditional, conventional way before starting this investigation.
I hope they scrutinize it because there they have a lot of proof that actually Telegram is a completely legitimate and compliant organization and we've spent huge funds on content moderation and legal compliance all over the world since like 10 years ago.
So I only asked, I knew that, and I just wanted you to say it because, just to underscore the point, you're not like some, you know, Belarusian college student doing this out of your room or something.
This is like a worldwide huge company.
It's just absolutely crazy.
And it doesn't have as deep penetration in the United States as it does in the rest of the world.
So I just want people to know this is not some sketchy deal.
Yes, they're all in Dubai and I have kids in Dubai that I am unable to not just see, I'm unable to legally take care of them by signing certain documents I have to sign.
And I've, you know, it's been...
I also have this company to run.
We have a billion users.
It's important.
And I'm doing it remotely now, but it's not as efficient.
So if you think about it, France is less than 1% of the Telegram user base.
And it's kind of counterintuitive for me that the entire organization is impacted because we have this ongoing investigation here in France, particularly given the fact that it's going in a pace that only requires me to be here once in several months.
So I do think that the current restriction is very strange and very unnecessary.
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That's what bothered me when I was in police custody for these four days.
First thing, something like this should have never happened because I assumed there were certain thorough procedures to verify a lot of alleged facts before taking a decision such as this.
You can't start something like this based on a media article that Telegram allegedly is non-cooperative.
Or that Telegram supposedly has worse content moderation than other platforms.
Both these facts turned out to be completely false.
You have to be really thorough and examine things before making this decision because these decisions such as this are not only harmful for my relatives or for my company or for me personally.
Decisions such as this, I think, impact France as a whole.
And I'm a French citizen, so I worry about that as well.
I really think that out of all social media platforms, Telegram was probably the most friendly potential partner for France.
And every time anyone from the French government, from the French authorities, reached out to me, I did my best to help.
I helped.
So this, for me, looked almost like friendly fire.
They're trying to attack their own ally, in a way.
And I was so surprised that this would happen because the collateral damage, not just for me and my company, but for the image of France, is quite significant.
And I talked to many of my friends, the CEO of big tech companies.
And they were very concerned and asked me, can I still come to France?
Is it still safe to be in France?
People were worried.
And the CEOs of the smaller companies, they don't have a billion users, are even more worried.
They say, look, they did this to you and you're very well known and the company of your profile should be treated.
In a certain different way.
And I'm running a small startup, a friend of mine would say.
These countries that you grew up thinking are primitive or don't have functioning legal systems or whose laws are really as a function of the whim of the monarch or whatever, they turn out to be kind of fine with what you do or what I do or what any normal person who believes in human rights does, but it's like France or Great Britain?
Didn't you get citizenship here thinking this was a safe haven as someone who was in some sense kind of a refugee from his own country?
Refugee principle, like, I don't want to share this with the government, I'm leaving.
Didn't you choose this country for citizenship because you thought that it was a place that was committed to human rights?
Well, the slogan of France is liberty, fraternity, equality, right?
equality.
So it's something that I strongly believe in.
And it's certainly something that France
And that's why it was such a shock for me back there in the police custody.
Interestingly, the interpreter that we had during these four days in police custody also emigrated from the Soviet Union.
She was translating English to French and back.
And after being present there for two days, she sat during a break with all the policemen and clerks and everybody present there.
And she said, I left the Soviet Union.
I was hoping I would be in a country with freedoms, and it seems now that the Soviet Union has caught up with me.
So I was very surprised to hear her say that, because for me France is not there yet.
France is still the country that respects human rights and freedoms.
However, I later understood why she was so sensitive to this.
Because she actually experienced what life is like in an environment where you don't have freedom of speech and you don't have a free market economy.
And that's why every perceived change in this direction where freedoms are less respected It's making them very, very concerned, people from the Soviet Union.
And I myself, I remember my life, I was a small kid in the Soviet Union, but I remember having all these three TV channels, and all these three TV channels show the same TV program about the Communist Party.
I remember having two kinds of ice cream in the shops across the city and across the country and no more.
And then when I was...
And I could see, okay, actually, I could have 100 TV channels.
And some of them even show Disney cartoons and Japanese anime.
That's great.
I can go to a shop downstairs and they have 200 different kinds of ice cream.
That's much better than what I experienced in the Soviet Union.
And I thought, maybe these things...
But the problem is, I remember this life in the absence of these things.
Other people from the Soviet Union, probably from Cuba, from other countries like that, experienced that.
But people who were born and grew up here, for example, in France, have not necessarily had this experience.
They take freedoms for granted.
They think that things are going to be fine because we're a free country and what can possibly go wrong?
Unfortunately, the history knows many examples when free societies gradually degraded into societies without freedoms.
And one good example was last month with this anti-encryption law.
I told you before about.
Because people were completely ignorant here in France.
Or in the Soviet Union, they would say, like in Maoist China, in other places, they would say, oh, our geopolitical rival is trying to stir chaos in our country, so we have to limit this.
But it's always some Trotskyite wreckers, it's some unseen force from a foreign land trying to wreck our projects so we need to oppress you to keep you safe.
Yes, but it's not easy because now in the European Union you have all these laws that basically say you have to remove anything.
It's actually part of the Digital Services Act.
You have to remove anything one of the European countries For the entirety of the European Union.
So if you have, for example, Romania or Estonia or any other of these very highly respected countries demanding that you remove most of Telegram channels for whatever reason, you have to remove them.
Then you can appeal.
Well, it will take you probably several years, but you have to remove them within like, I Otherwise, you'll be facing fines, bans, and so on.
I have to be able to say to the person making the decisions, I don't like that decision, and here's why, and I have to be able to say it in public.
I've always felt that the problem that you have, as the person who owns and runs Telegram, is that you make it easy for people to come together online.
You have the channels.
And that is, I don't know if you thought this through, and you're an engineer when you built it, but that is potentially a massive threat to governments.
Because it's not simply communicating one-on-one.
People can create their own channels, just like a TV channel, and reach a lot of like-minded people, and they could potentially organize.
It's very hard to be confident in anything because, first of all, we have to rely on the computing power of our devices.
To decrypt things.
Of course, there are very sophisticated algorithms in place that make it so that you don't have to have the same level of computing power on your device as in a data center.
So particularly state actors have almost infinite computing power at their disposal, and they have certain technologies at their disposal that they may not be telling everybody about.
So that kind of is one of the, and I know you have, And I know your life is complicated because I don't want to push you to say things that get you in trouble, but it does feel like a determined government can spy on anybody who wants to.
I'm trying to extract this from you for one simple reason, which is I think that when you come across someone who knows an immense amount about technology, really understands the technology, it's interesting to know his perspective on technology.
With everything you know, you don't use a phone.
So I just think people can draw their own conclusions from that.
So he ran Silk Road, and I'm hardly an expert on this.
I was very pleased when he got pardoned.
But it seemed like no one accused him of selling drugs, by the way.
You would never know that from me in the New York Times, but he was not dealing drugs on playgrounds or anything like that.
He had a site that made commerce possible outside the control of government, and there apparently were bad people doing bad things on it.
Also, a lot of good people doing good things on it, but none of it was controlled by the government, and he got life in prison for that.
That's my takeaway.
And so maybe there will...
Oh, my...
My sort of conclusion from this is, as long as people like you create technology that makes it harder for government to control people, you will be a target of government action.
And it's not necessarily some huge conspiracy where evil governments want to take more and more control, although that may be the case.
I'm not knowledgeable on this subject.
It seems to me more like everybody's trying to solve the problems that they see using the tools that they have at their disposal, even if it negatively impacts Other areas of our lives.
I would be very surprised if that happened because, you see, I'm traveling to Dubai.
I'm coming back.
It's obvious that I'm not somebody who would try to escape forever.
And this investigation has to be concluded in one way or the other.
Of course, then if it goes to trial, if that happens, it can take another several years.
But then again, it would be completely crazy, I would say, if I would have to move to France and live here permanently for the whole duration of this process.
I would say, most likely, I expect that I would be able to travel again later this year.
So it turns out that YouTube is suppressing this show.
On one level, that's not surprising.
That's what they do.
But on another level, it's shocking.
With everything that's going on in the world right now, all the change taking place in our economy and our politics, with the wars on the cusp of fighting right now, Google has decided you should have less information rather than more.
And that is totally wrong.
It's immoral.
What can you do about it?
Well, we could whine about it.
That's a waste of time.
We're not in charge of Google.
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