Telegram: Pavel Durov could already be out of prison

It’s official: tomorrow morning the founder and CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, could already be released by the French authorities and get out of prison. 

Durov was arrested Saturday August 24, in France, at 8 in the morning.

According to what was officially declared yesterday by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Paris, the preventive detention can last up to 96 hours, that is, at most until August 28.

The doubts

These are the official pieces of information currently available to the media, but there is some doubt that Durov will actually be released tomorrow. 

The key point is that for now Durov is only in preventive custody, because he has not yet been officially charged. 

In the event that there are no new developments, and the situation remains as it is, in fact tomorrow morning the final terms for preventive custody would expire in his case, and he should therefore be released. 

But there is no guarantee that the situation will remain as it is, because now that the French authorities have managed to arrest him, a month after the arrest warrant was issued, it is possible that they are trying to speed up the investigations. 

Durov not only has not yet been convicted – and in fact is only in preventive custody – but apparently has not even been indicted yet. He has simply been accused of as many as 12 crimes, which made it possible to issue the arrest warrant. However, if he were to be indicted before release, the situation could change. 

The official statement on the possible release from prison of Pavel Durov of Telegram

The official statement from the Prosecutor’s Office was issued yesterday by the Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau. 

Beccuau wrote that Durov was arrested and placed in police custody for a judicial investigation opened on July 8, 2024, following an inquiry conducted by the section of the Paris Prosecutor’s Office that deals with combating cybercrime (JUNALCO). 

The statement also says that the investigators following this investigation have contacted the center for combating digital crime (C3N) and the National Anti-Fraud Office (ONAF), and it is within this procedural framework that they are questioning Durov.

After the arrest on Saturday, August 24, the day after the precautionary measure against him had been extended to the maximum possible (96 hours), that is until August 28. 

The document also listed the 12 crimes of which the founder of Telegram is accused, including complicity in illicit transactions by organized gangs, as the administrator of the platform, and the refusal to communicate, at the request of authorized authorities, information or documents necessary to carry out and exploit interceptions authorized by law. 

To these accusations, they have added other accusations of complicity, for example in the distribution of images of minors of a pedo-pornographic nature, in the sale of drugs, or in fraud. 

Among the 12 charges, the one for criminal conspiracy aimed at committing crimes punishable by 5 years of imprisonment stands out, and the one for money laundering. 

finally they also accuse him of providing, through Telegram, encryption services aimed at ensuring confidentiality functions without an adequate declaration. 

The accusations

A calculation has been made according to which, if found guilty of all charges, he could face up to 20 years in prison. 

However, it is necessary to specify and emphasize that at the current state these are only accusations. 

The French judiciary, in short, does not yet consider him guilty of these accusations. 

Now, after having arrested him on French soil and interrogated him for four days, it will be necessary for the magistrates who are investigating the case to decide if there are grounds to charge him, in order to be able to prosecute him, or if tomorrow they will be forced to release him. 

It should be noted that the French president Macron publicly stated yesterday that politics have nothing to do with this case, and that it is an exclusive initiative of the French judiciary. 

The French magistrature

Pavel Durov is Russian by origin, but he is also a French citizen, as well as of the United Arab Emirates (Telegram is headquartered in Dubai). 

The French judiciary, according to Beccuau, has been investigating him and Telegram for just over a month. Additionally, it has issued an arrest warrant against him that is only valid on French territory.

Sabato Durov landed at the Paris-Le Bourget airport, and once he landed on French soil, he was arrested. 

Not much is known about Laure Beccuau. 

It is known that she was born in 1960, so she is 64 years old. She became a public prosecutor in 2013, in Nîmes, and since 2021 she has been a prosecutor in Paris. 

She is the first woman to be appointed prosecutor of Paris. 

It is not clear if he has any particular motivation to pursue Telegram and Durov. However, the accusations he is making against them still appear quite realistic.

The problema

The main problem seems to be the one connected to the second charge. That is, the refusal to communicate, upon request of the authorized authorities, information or documents necessary to carry out and exploit the interceptions authorized by the law.

Since on platforms like Telegram it is inevitable that someone commits crimes, those who administer them should intervene at a later stage to limit the damage. Furthermore, they should possibly avoid that the crimes are committed again, and above all collaborate with the authorities to hunt down the criminals.

Telegram actually claims to comply with EU laws, including the Digital Services Act. However, if it then refuses to cooperate, it opens the doors wide to the judiciary.

As highlighted in the press release from the prosecutor’s office, one of the main problems appears to be the dissemination of pedo-pornographic images. Which is always and in any case a crime.

Not only does it appear that Telegram does not cooperate with the authorities, upon their requests, to try to identify those who commit this crime, but it also appears that it does not remove them. In fact, it seems that there are also public channels on Telegram where pedo-pornographic images are continuously published, which are not always removed from the platform. Furthermore, these same channels are sometimes not closed.