Oh no. There’s a certain degree of myth-making around what exactly went on, so take everything that follows lightly. Telegram was originally launched as a side project by the Durov brothers, with Nikolai handling the coding and Pavel as CEO, while both were at VK. Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Kyiv-based lawyer and head of the Center for Civil Liberties, called Durov’s position "very weak," and urged concrete improvements. In the United States, Telegram's lower public profile has helped it mostly avoid high level scrutiny from Congress, but it has not gone unnoticed. This provided opportunity to their linked entities to offload their shares at higher prices and make significant profits at the cost of unsuspecting retail investors. Multiple pro-Kremlin media figures circulated the post's false claims, including prominent Russian journalist Vladimir Soloviev and the state-controlled Russian outlet RT, according to the DFR Lab's report.
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