By EZ in News — Aug 27, 2024

Telegram Founder Pavel Durov Charged on 12 Criminal Counts in France (UPDATED)

Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau announced that Telegram founder Pavel Durov faces 12 charges, including facilitating illegal online transactions, unauthorized cryptology services, enabling organized crime, and obstructing justice.

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Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested at Le Bourget airport near Paris on August 24 by the French National Anti-Fraud Office.
Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau issued a statement outlining 12 charges against Durov. These include complicity in facilitating illegal online transactions, unauthorized provision of cryptology services, enabling organized crime activities on Telegram, and obstructing justice by refusing to provide critical information to law enforcement agencies.

Charges include:

Complicity – web-mastering an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction in organized group.
Refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law.
Complicity – possessing pornographic images of minors.
Complicity - distributing, offering or making available pornographic images of minors, in organized group.
Complicity - acquiring, transporting, possessing, offering or selling narcotic substances.
Complicity - offering, selling or making available, without legitimate reason, equipment, tools, programs or data designed for or adapted to get access to and to damage the operation of an automated data processing system.
Complicity – organized fraud.
Criminal association with a view to committing a crime or an offense punishable by 5 or more years of imprisonment.
Laundering of the proceeds derived from organized group’s offences and crimes.
Providing cryptology services aiming to ensure confidentiality without certified declaration.
Providing a cryptology tool not solely ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration.
Importing a cryptology tool ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration.

"The investigative magistrates in charge of this preliminary judicial investigation have requested a co-referral of the Centre for the Fight against Cybercrime (Centre de lutte contre les criminalités numériques, C3N) and the Anti-Fraud National Office (Office National Anti-Fraude, ONAF) for the pursuance of the investigations," was stated in the press release.

Durov's custody period was extended until the 25th August 2024 by an investigative magistrate and can last up to 96 hours (that being the 28th August 2024).
The United Arab Emirates is closely monitoring the case of Pavel Durov. The UAE has requested that the French government urgently provide all necessary consular services. It is noted that Durov holds Emirati citizenship and resides in Dubai.

"In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) stressed that prioritising the welfare of UAE citizens, safeguarding their interests, and providing them with all aspects of support is a key priority for the UAE," reports Khaleej Times.

Telegram has issued the following statement in response to Durov's arrest during the weekend:

Telegram, with ~950 million monthly active users, is a major social media platform like Facebook and WhatsApp. It is popular in Russia, Ukraine, and among pro-democracy groups in Iran and Hong Kong.
Telegram supports groups of up to 200,000 users (or channels for broadcasting to unlimited audiences). Telegram offers encryption, but it is not the default setting.
Telegram is also known to be widely used by the Russian military for battlefield communications due to problems with rolling out its own secure comms system, reports POLITICO.