MOSCOW -Pavel Durov, the billionaire founding father of the Telegram messaging app, accused French intelligence on Sunday of asking him by way of an middleman to censor some Moldovan voices forward of a presidential vote final 12 months in return for assist along with his courtroom case in France.
Moldovans had been voting in a parliamentary election on Sunday that would have a significant affect on the federal government’s quest to affix the European Union, as a pro-Russian opposition group seeks to steer the nation away from nearer ties with the bloc.
France didn’t instantly touch upon the remarks by Durov, who was arrested in 2024 at a French airport. He’s beneath judicial supervision in France whereas being investigated for suspected organised crime on the app.
Durov denies guilt and has mentioned the accusations by France are “legally and logically absurd”.
Durov mentioned on Sunday that whereas he was caught in Paris, French intelligence used an middleman, whom he didn’t identify, to ask him to “censor” some Telegram channels for the Moldovan authorities.
Durov mentioned “a couple of that clearly violated our guidelines” had been eliminated and that the middleman advised him that in change for this, French intelligence would “say good issues” about him to the choose who ordered his arrest.
“This was unacceptable on a number of ranges,” Durov mentioned. “If the company did in actual fact method the choose — it constituted an try and intrude within the judicial course of.”
“If it didn’t, and merely claimed to have performed so, then it was exploiting my authorized scenario in France to affect political developments in Japanese Europe — a sample we’ve additionally noticed in Romania.”
FRANCE DENIED PAST ACCUSATIONS
Durov mentioned in Might that the pinnacle of France’s overseas intelligence company requested him to ban Romanian conservative voices forward of the elections. France’s DGSE, the overseas intelligence service, denied that on the time.
In Sunday’s submit on Telegram, Durov mentioned French intelligence provided “a second record of so-called ‘problematic’ Moldovan channels.”
“Not like the primary, almost all of those channels had been official and absolutely compliant with our guidelines,” Durov mentioned. “Their solely commonality was that they voiced political positions disliked by the French and Moldovan governments.”
Telegram was based by Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after he refused to adjust to calls for to close down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he has offered.
The encrypted software, with over 1 billion month-to-month lively customers, is especially influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the previous Soviet Union.
Durov, who was born in Soviet Leningrad and graduated from St Petersburg State College, lists his political beliefs as “libertarian” and says he was impressed by Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs.
(Writing by Man Faulconbridge; Enhancing by Andrew Cawthorne)
