Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Charged in France for Allowing Crime on App, Bail Set at €5M

• After being held for 96 hours, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was finally charged by French authorities with allegedly enabling criminal activities.
• Durov was released on bail, which was set at €5 million, and cannot leave France yet.
• Among the accusations are the allowing of illicit transactions, drug trafficking, and fraud.

Telegram owner Pavel Durov was formally charged on Wednesday and placed under judicial supervision following his arrest on Saturday. He will need to post a €5 million bail and report to the police station twice a week without leaving French territory, according to local press.

Accusations include enabling organized crime, illicit transactions, drug trafficking, and fraud and being complicit in the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The lack of a declaration of conformity for encryption on the platform and refusal to communicate information for interceptions allowed by law that authorities require are also on the list. 

The Russian-born billionaire and Telegram CEO, who also has French citizenship, was taken into custody last weekend at a private jet airport north of Paris while he was traveling on his private jet from Azerbaijan. Arrest warrants for Durov and his co-founder brother Nikolai were issued in March 2024.

The French arrest warrant is part of a preliminary investigation led by a cybersecurity gendarmerie and the national anti-fraud police unit. The inquiry looks into the alleged enabling of a wide array of crimes due to a lack of Telegram moderators and cooperation with the police.

However, there’s no suggestion of either of the Durov brothers’ direct involvement in the said illegal activities.

Durov's iPhone was hacked by French spies in a joint operation with the United Arab Emirates in 2017 over concerns about Islamic State using Telegram for recruiting and planning attacks.

A Telegram statement on Sunday declared Pavel Durov has “nothing to hide,” underlining the absurdity of linking the abuse of a platform to its owner. The statement also mentioned that the Dubai-based company abides by European Union laws.

This year, concerns over Telegram becoming a tool for hackers to deploy malware increased. Telegram’s versatility as a messaging app attracted cybercriminals who use Telegram's API to create bots for their criminal activities. The bots can send back alerts with real-time updates about the infected target, mainly in complex attacks on websites.
In other news, a now-patched zero-day Telegram for Android flaw was recently up for sale on a Russian-speaking hacking forum. Dubbed EvilVideo, the flaw allowed attackers to send hidden malicious APK payloads that look like multimedia files via Android Telegram in v10.14.4 and older.