Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, is pictured onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015 on Sept. 21, 2015, in San Francisco.
Steve Jennings/Getty Pictures for TechCrunch
cover caption
toggle caption
Steve Jennings/Getty Pictures for TechCrunch
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov broke his silence 8 days after being indicted by means of French government. On his non-public Telegram channel, amid thank yous, hearts and thumbs up emojis, Durov defiantly refuted claims that his messaging platform is “an anarchic paradise” and criticized the French fees as ‘erroneous.’ “If a rustic is gloomy with an web provider, the established apply is to begin a criminal motion in opposition to the provider itself. The use of regulations from the pre-smartphone technology to rate a CEO with crimes dedicated by means of 3rd events at the platform he manages is a erroneous method. “
Whilst the Russian born tech billionaire said Telegram is “now not best possible,” he maintained the corporate has taken down thousands and thousands of posts and is busy remedying protocols to make the platform “more secure and more potent.” Telegram has observed massive enlargement since its founding in 2013. It now boasts 950 million world customers. Durov blamed “rising pains that made it more uncomplicated for criminals to abuse our platform.”
The 39-year outdated citizen of France and the United Arab Emirates used to be indicted on Aug. 28 in Paris on a couple of fees together with spreading kid abuse pictures, drug trafficking and failure to agree to regulation enforcement. He used to be ordered to put up bail similar to $5.5 million and positioned below courtroom tracking. He’s additionally now not authorised to depart the rustic. In Thursday’s brief Telegram put up, Durov added main points of what went down within the days after he used to be arrested in Paris in past due August. “Final month I were given interviewed by means of police for 4 days after arriving in Paris. I used to be informed I could also be individually answerable for folks’s unlawful use of Telegram, for the reason that French government didn’t obtain responses from Telegram.” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau stated in a observation ultimate week outlining the wide-ranging fees that Telegram exhibited an “virtually overall failure to answer judicial requests.”
Durov disputes the fees and accusations, announcing in his put up: “Telegram has an legit consultant within the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests,” and “The French government had a lot of techniques to achieve me to request help.”
