Telegram’s Pavel Durov arrested in France, report says

Sources told the TV network TF1 that he was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris after traveling in his private jet from Azerbaijan.

The report added that a warrant had been issued as part of a police investigation into a lack of moderators on Telegram, which allowed criminal activity to take place.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune. 

Durov was born in Russia and lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, carrying dual citizenship in France and the United Arab Emirates.

He and his brother Nikolai founded Telegram in 2013 but left Russia in 2014 after he refused to provide encrypted user data to Russia’s secret service and refusing to shut down opposition communities on a separate social network that he later sold.

He moved to Dubai in 2017 and became a French citizen in 2021, according to Forbes, which estimates Durov’s net worth at $15.5 billion.

Telegram, which has about 900 million active users, has grown in popularity as a way to more securely communicate via its encrypted messages.

While it has been used in conflict zones as well as by militant groups, Durov has said Telegram is a neutral platform and not a “player in geopolitics.”