Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has once again spoken out against what he sees as France's unjust and politically motivated prosecution of him and his company.
In a statement posted on his Telegram channel, Durov says that the investigation, which has been ongoing for two years now, "makes less sense with each passing year."
It started with his arrest in France on August 24, 2024.
The charges against him are "complicity in crimes committed by others" who use Telegram – and the "crime" of the company is that it doesn't "moderate" content, i.e., censor, and doesn't hand over user data to the authorities. In other words, Telegram is in hot water for not betraying its users' trust.
The most serious accusation against Durov is that he is effectively running a platform that enables illegal transactions between organized groups, and that is something that could land him in prison for ten years and force him to pay a 500,000 euro fine.
But Durov isn't buying it. In his statement, he explains that the case against him and his company is a clear case of the authorities trying to make Telegram shoulder the blame for their own failure, and at the same time, trying to force the platform to become a tool for "illegal censorship or surveillance."
Telegram, he said, has been "quietly pressured to grant political favors — such as illegal censorship or surveillance." When it refuses, he said, it is targeted with "orchestrated campaigns portraying Telegram as a cesspool of crime, from child pornography to terrorism."
Durov's statement makes it clear that he believes the accusations against him and his company are simply a form of punishment for Telegram's consistent refusal to play by the rules imposed by the authorities, who want it to act as a tool for mass-scale illegal surveillance and censorship.
As for the case in France, Durov was originally arrested in August 2024, and then released on 5 million euro bail. He was at the time banned from leaving France and had to report to the police twice a week. A year and a half later, the investigation was still ongoing. In November 2025, the travel ban was lifted, and the obligation to report to the police regularly was dropped.
Durov has been questioned several times since his arrest, but the case has not been dropped, despite the fact that he and Telegram have yet to be found culpable in any way.
