Telegram founder Pavel Durov called the French charges against him “misguided,” but at the same time promised to boost efforts to fight illicit activity on the messaging app.
In his first public comments since his arrest in France last month, Durov claimed that French authorities should have brought charges against the company Telegram and not him personally.
“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” Durov wrote in a post on Telegram Thursday evening. “Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach,” he said.
Durov was arrested near Paris on August 24 as part of an investigation into alleged crimes involving child pornography, drug trafficking, and fraudulent activities linked to the Telegram app. French authorities indicted him in late August on six charges. He was released on €5 million bail and prohibited from leaving the country.
Durov also responded to accusations that Telegram is an “anarchic paradise,” dismissing them as “simply untrue.”
“We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day,” he wrote.
But Durov admitted that the app is not perfect and claimed that a surge in users to 950 million “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”
“That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard,” he said. “We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.”
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