French authorities have indicted Telegram founder Pavel Durov on multiple charges including spreading child abuse images, drug trafficking and failure to comply with law enforcement requests.
The court placed Durov under court monitoring. Under the terms of his judicial supervision, he is not permitted to leave France. He was ordered to post bail equivalent to about $5.5 million.
Officials in Paris also said Durov must appear at a police station twice a week.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said during French authorities' investigation, Telegram exhibited an "almost total failure to respond to judicial requests."
The charges mark a dramatic blow to the Russian-born tech billionaire, who is considered a hero among some internet libertarians for his laissez-faire approach to content moderation on Telegram, a messaging service used by nearly a billion people.
The indictment against Durov, the founder and CEO of a prominent social media platform, is also extraordinary and unusual, since holding executives at social networks criminally liable for content that appears on sites was, until now, considered almost unthinkable.
Durov, who operates Telegram from Dubai, was apprehended Saturday as he was traveling back from Azerbaijan. He was held for questioning until Wednesday.
Durov, 39, a reclusive tech billionaire, holds citizenship in both the United Arab Emirates and France.
Prosecutors in Paris announced earlier this week that they launched a broad-ranging investigation into online crimes last month involving the circulation of child abuse images, illegal drug peddling and the refusal to cooperate with authorities.
Authorities had been questioning Durov as part of that probe. French law enforcement officials originally said a “person unnamed” prompted the investigation. But on Wednesday, authorities in Paris clarified that Durov is "the only person implicated in this case."
Durov’s arrest and indictment have set off a debate over the balance of online safety and free expression, with one side describing the tech executive as a free speech martyr and others underscoring Telegram’s long history of ignoring law enforcement requests over illicit activity.
Whatever Durov’s portrayal, a government charging the founder and CEO of a popular social media platform over its content is considered extraordinary and historic.
After French officials detained Durov, Telegram released a statement saying that “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” adding that the platform complies with European Union laws.
Russian government officials condemned Durov's detention. A spokesman for the Kremlin said Tuesday that arresting Durov could be viewed as an act of intimidation and a suppression of freedom of speech if France did not provide serious evidence of his guilt.
The support from Russian officials raised questions about how the Kremlin has changed its view of Durov, since Russia has, at various times, fined Telegram for not taking down content and temporarily banned the app in Russia.
Founded in 2013, Telegram now has more than 900 million users, making it among the most popular messaging services in the world. The platform is known for “channels,” or sprawling group chats of hundreds of thousands of people often organized around live news events, like the war in Ukraine, or political and investing topics.
On Telegram, channels are not encrypted, nor are most one-on-one conversations by default. But users can turn on end-to-end encryption in individual chats, putting the chat logs outside the reach of law enforcement, since Telegram itself would not have a record of what was shared or said.
The level of security, which is also featured in chats on competing messaging services WhatsApp and Signal, can be used for protection from prying governments but also harnessed by bad actors to conduct covert and illegal activities.
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