“Russian Mark Zuckerberg”, war in Ukraine, founder of Telegram… who is Pavel Durov, the billionaire arrested in France ?

Pavel Durov was arrested in France. GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA – STEVE JENNINGS

Arrested Saturday as he got off a plane at Le Bourget airport near Paris, the Franco-Russian billionaire Pavel Durov is a self-proclaimed libertarian, a champion of internet privacy but controversial for his refusal of any moderation on the Telegram messaging service, which he co-founded.

Pavel Durov, 39, is due to appear in court on Sunday, after the Office for Combating Violence against Minors (Ofmin) issued a search warrant for offences ranging from fraud to drug trafficking, cyberbullying and organised crime, including the glorification of terrorism and fraud.

It was in 2006, after graduating from the University of Saint Petersburg (Russia), the city where he was born on 10 October 1984, that Pavel Durov made a name for himself by launching the social network VKontakte (VK), which quickly became the first in Russia ahead of Facebook and earned him the nickname of “Mark Zuckerberg Russian".

But VK's success caused friction and Durov, after selling the platform – taken over by people close to the government – left Russia in 2014. He was then in trouble with the Kremlin for refusing to hand over the personal data of users, particularly Ukrainian pro-European activists, to the Russian security services (FSB).

A role in the war in Ukraine

Developing the Telegram messaging service – launched in 2013 – with his brother Nikolai while travelling from country to country, he settled in Dubai and obtained citizenship of the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts and Nevis, then, in August 2021, French nationality thanks to a rare procedure on which Paris remains very discrete.

In the meantime, Telegram has recorded a dazzling success, positioning itself as the champion of individual freedoms, of the refusal of "censorship" and the privacy of its users. This is annoying: in 2018, a Moscow court ordered the blocking of the application. It was a fiasco and three days later, protesters ironically bombarded the FSB headquarters with paper planes, the symbol of Telegram.

Since then, Russia has abandoned its efforts and the messaging service is used by both the government and the opposition, with some "channels" having several hundred thousand subscribers. Telegram also plays a vital role in the war in Ukraine, documented by bloggers from both sides who post their analyses and countless videos of the fighting.

A fortune of 15.5 billion dollars

“I think we are doing a good job with Telegram, with 900 million users that will probably exceed 1 billion monthly active users within a year,”, Durov said in April in a rare interview with ultra-conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson.

Absent from the mainstream media, Pavel Durov does not hesitate to put himself in the spotlight on his Telegram page, claiming to lead a solitary life, abstaining from meat and alcohol. Always dressed in black, he cultivates his resemblance to actor Keanu Reeves in the film “Matrix”.

In July, he boasted of being the biological father of more than 100 children thanks to his sperm donations in a dozen countries. A “civic duty”,he said, bringing him closer to the pro-natalist movement to which Elon Musk and several tech billionaires adhere.

According to the magazine Forbes, Pavel Durov's fortune is estimated in 2024 at 15.5 billion dollars (13.38 billion euros) but the toncoin, the cryptocurrency he created, has plummeted by more than 15% since the announcement of his arrest.

Propagation of conspiracy theories, calls for murder, drug sales platform: for years, Telegram has been in the sights of European judicial authorities. Pavel Durov, however, assures that he responds to every request to remove content calling for violence or murder.

Many experts also remain doubtful about the real security offered by Telegram. While the platform claims to be "more secure than mass messaging services like WhatsApp", it does not encrypt messages by default, unlike the Facebook subsidiary.

And the platform has regularly collaborated with judicial authorities: in 2022, threatened with blocking by the Brazilian Supreme Court, Telegram agreed to close accounts accused of disinformation. The same year, Germany welcomed the discussions "constructive" with the messaging service, popular with local far-right or anti-vaxxer activists.