Telegram founder Pavel Durov said in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson that he still cannot understand what the French authorities are accusing him of.
“I still don’t understand what exactly I am accused of. At first, they said that we allegedly did not respond to legal requests, but that is not true. And even if it were, such an interpretation of ‘complicity’ is extremely far-fetched. Lawyers say that there are almost no precedents,” Durov said.
He emphasized that previously in France, “they went after small apps made specifically for criminals, without bank accounts, without audits.” Telegram, he said, is on a whole other level — “a billion users, audits, transparency.”
“They say that among Telegram’s billion users, there were those who engaged in illegal activities, and I allegedly did not do enough to prevent it. But that’s ridiculous. It’s like arresting Donald Trump because one of 350 million Americans committed a crime. Or putting Macron in jail for a robbery in Toulouse. It’s absurd,” said the founder of Telegram.
Durov is in France, where, according to some estimates, he has been stuck for at least a year on charges of insufficient moderation of content in the messenger and evading cooperation with the authorities.
“I was released to Dubai (in the spring), I recently returned and will go there again this week. But it’s a very limited, controlled process,” he explained.
Durov also said in the interview that French intelligence met with him to obtain information about Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania under the pretext of fighting terrorism and child pornography.
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