Pavel Durov Has Been Charged and Must Remain in France
Pavel Durov has been accused of participating in organized criminal activities, money laundering, and refusing to provide data upon the authorities' request. This information was disclosed in a press release from the French prosecutor's office, obtained by "Novaya Gazeta Europe".
As a result of these charges, Durov is now under judicial supervision: he is prohibited from leaving France and must post a bail of 5 million euros. He will be released on bail but will be required to report to a police station in person twice a week.
The list of charges includes six crimes: • Conspiracy to manage an online platform used for illegal transactions as part of an organized group; • Refusal to provide information or documents requested by authorized bodies necessary for lawful wiretapping; • Complicity in crimes by allowing Telegram access to users involved in distributing child pornography, trafficking drugs, fraud, and other criminal activities; • Money laundering resulting from crimes or offenses as part of an organized group; • Providing cryptographic services without proper declaration; • Importing cryptographic tools to ensure confidentiality without prior declaration.
Pavel Durov Has Been Charged and Must Remain in France
Pavel Durov has been accused of participating in organized criminal activities, money laundering, and refusing to provide data upon the authorities' request. This information was disclosed in a press release from the French prosecutor's office, obtained by "Novaya Gazeta Europe".
As a result of these charges, Durov is now under judicial supervision: he is prohibited from leaving France and must post a bail of 5 million euros. He will be released on bail but will be required to report to a police station in person twice a week.
The list of charges includes six crimes: • Conspiracy to manage an online platform used for illegal transactions as part of an organized group; • Refusal to provide information or documents requested by authorized bodies necessary for lawful wiretapping; • Complicity in crimes by allowing Telegram access to users involved in distributing child pornography, trafficking drugs, fraud, and other criminal activities; • Money laundering resulting from crimes or offenses as part of an organized group; • Providing cryptographic services without proper declaration; • Importing cryptographic tools to ensure confidentiality without prior declaration.
Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, a social network used for public and private messaging, audio and video sharing as well as online gaming. In January, SimpleWeb reported that VK was Russia’s fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Google’s Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbes’ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia.” Pavel Durov, Telegram's CEO, is known as "the Russian Mark Zuckerberg," for co-founding VKontakte, which is Russian for "in touch," a Facebook imitator that became the country's most popular social networking site. You may recall that, back when Facebook started changing WhatsApp’s terms of service, a number of news outlets reported on, and even recommended, switching to Telegram. Pavel Durov even said that users should delete WhatsApp “unless you are cool with all of your photos and messages becoming public one day.” But Telegram can’t be described as a more-secure version of WhatsApp. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces "destroy the invaders wherever we can." One thing that Telegram now offers to all users is the ability to “disappear” messages or set remote deletion deadlines. That enables users to have much more control over how long people can access what you’re sending them. Given that Russian law enforcement officials are reportedly (via Insider) stopping people in the street and demanding to read their text messages, this could be vital to protect individuals from reprisals.
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