Paris- Pavel Durov, billionaire co-founder and chief executive of Telegram, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening for alleged offences related to the popular messaging app.
France’s OFMIN, an agency tasked with preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov
Durov,a Russian-born entrepreneur lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and holds dual citizenship in France and the United Arab Emirates.
Durov, who is estimated by Forbes to have a fortune of $15.5bn (£12bn), left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.
Durov and his brother Nikolai founded the messaging app in 2013 and it has about 900 million active users.
Citing a representative from the Russian embassy in France, TASS reported there had been no appeal from Durov’s team to the embassy, but that it was proactively taking “immediate” steps.
Telegram offers end-to-end encrypted messaging and users can also set up “channels” to disseminate information quickly to followers.
