Who is Pavel Durov, the Telegram Founder?

Pavel Durov, the CEO and co-founder of Telegram, the secure messaging application, has been arrested by the French authorities at the Le Bourget Airport near Paris on August 24.

Why in the News?

Pavel Durov has been arrested, and the arrest was done as part of the preliminary police investigation. Durov allegedly "allowed a wide range of crimes due to a lack of moderators on Telegram and a lack of cooperation with police".

In response, the official account of Telegram said on X that it was "absurd" to hold the platform or its owner responsible for the abuse of the platform.

Emmanuel Macron, the French President also said on the matter through a post on X. He said that the arrest of Durov was actually not a "political communication". He further said that France was “deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication” he said further. He further stated that, In a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights.”

Pavel Durov

Pavel Durov was born in the Soviet Union. He studied at the St Petersburg University, Russia. Then, he co-founded Vkontakte, a social media application. The app became quite famous in the country.

However, as per some sources, Pavel Durov left Russia after some authorities asked him to offer the encrypted data of the users. 

In an interview, Durov talked about the same issue through a statement. He said, It was a bit painful because my first company was my baby.” He further added that at the very same time, he understood that he would rather be free rather than taking orders from anyone.

Later, in the year 2014, he founded another application, named Telegram. His brother was the co-founder. Nikolai designed the encryption of the application. A special feature of the app is that it permitted the creation of large groups. The groups can have up to 2,00,000 members. Another important feature is that it syncs with multiple devices.

Another that made Telegram a fit choice for many was that it synced well with multiple devices.

Since its inception, Telegram has become one of the most widely used applications all across the globe. As of the first few months of 2024, Telegram has had a user base of about 900 million. The success of the application made its founders billionaires. Pavel Durov also holds the citizenship of UAE and France.

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