President Emmanuel Macron on Monday denied any political link to the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov as the tech tycoon spent a second day in French custody following his surprise arrest at a Paris airport.
Numerous questions have been raised about the timing and circumstances of Durov’s detention, which a source close to the case said had been extended until Wednesday.
The 39-year-old billionaire is accused of failing to curb the spread of illegal content on Telegram, which has over 900 million users. The company has rejected the accusations.
Born in Soviet times into a family of academics in Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, Durov spent his childhood in Italy before building up Russia’s then biggest social network VKontakte (VK) in his early 20s.
He set up Telegram after leaving Russia a decade ago, and Forbes magazine estimates his current fortune at $15.5 billion.
In a post on X to address what he called “false information” concerning the case, Macron said Durov’s arrest “took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation”.
“It is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to rule on the matter,” he wrote in a highly unusual comment on a legal case.
Durov holds a French passport in addition to his Russian nationality.
Telegram has positioned itself as a “neutral” alternative to US-owned platforms, which have been criticised for their commercial exploitation of users’ personal data.
It also plays a key role since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, used actively by politicians and commentators on both sides of the war.
But critics accuse it of hosting often illegal content ranging from extreme sexual imagery to disinformation and also narcotics services.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Moscow had received no information from France on why Durov was detained, saying “we do not know concretely what Durov is accused of”.
Elon Musk, who leads the Tesla car group and X, formerly Twitter, posted the hashtag #FreePavel on his platform and commented in French, “Liberte Liberte! Liberte?” (Freedom Freedom! Freedom?).
Macron said that while France is “deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication”, such freedoms are “upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life”.
“It is up to the judiciary, in full independence, to enforce the law,” he said.
