The founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, always tries to understand why he was detained in France last August, although the motivations were political and linked to the efforts of the authorities to repress the presumed illegal activity on the messaging platform.
It was one of the main points to remember from Durov’s interview with Tucker Carlson, who was presented Tuesday on Youtube.
In his first interview since its August 24, 2024, arrest at Bourget airport outside Paris, Durov said that the French authorities seemed mainly interested in the functioning of the telegram-“as if it was a kind of mystery,” he joked.
“”[W]Et a large company, we are audited by a Big Four accounting firm, we work with the largest financial institutions […] We spend millions of dollars per quarter for legal compliance […] To ensure that we do not violate the laws anywhere and that we operate in nearly 200 countries, “said Durov.
“It was therefore very confusing for me to be detained in Paris and to learn that Telegram did something bad or did not process certain requests,” he said.
Durov was charged with six accusations of French prosecutors in August 2024 for alleged complicity of criminal activities, refusing to respond to the French authorities, money laundering, criminal association, providing cryptographic services without appropriate declaration and involvement in the propagation of illegal content allegedly facilitated by the limited moderation of Telegram. At the time, prosecutors said he could incur up to 10 years in prison.
“When I learned more about it, I realized that we hadn’t hurt anything,” he said, because the French authorities would not have followed a regular procedure in finding information from Durov or Telegram.
When Carlson pressed Durov on the accusations against him and why his movements remain limited, Durov replied: “I always try to discover it, to be honest. I am confused. ” He continued:
“At the beginning, they said,” Oh, you did not respond to our legal requests, and that is why you are an accomplice. “But first of all, it is not true that we did not respond to legally binding legal legal requests, and secondly, it is a very extensive interpretation of the complicity even for the French […] legal and judicial system. »»
Durov lawyers have described his detention as “unprecedented”.
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Tucker Carlson: The arrest of the founder of Telegram was an act of “humiliation”
During the interview, Carlson criticized not only the fact that Durov was detained, but the way it was carried out.
“Obviously, they disappeared from their way to humiliate you,” said Carlson.
Durov agreed, noting that his lawyers told him that the prosecutor’s office generally operated out of the public’s eyes and rarely issues press statements. This was “not the case with me,” he added.
While Carlson questioned the silence of so-called civilian libertarians, the TO community reported that more than 9 million telegram users had signed a letter calling for the Liberation of Durov.
While the conversation with Carlson has marked Durov’s first public interview since his arrest, he had broken his silence shortly after the incident last September, declaring that Telegram was ready to leave the countries that do not align with the commitment of the platform towards freedom of expression.
Telegram has since become one of the largest messaging platforms in the world, reaching a billion monthly active users in March, according to industry data.
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