Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, is pictured onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015 on Sept. 21, 2015, in San Francisco.
Steve Jennings/Getty Photos for TechCrunch
conceal caption
toggle caption
Steve Jennings/Getty Photos for TechCrunch
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov broke his silence eight days after being indicted by French authorities.
On his private Telegram channel, amid thank yous, hearts and thumbs up emojis, Durov defiantly refuted claims that his messaging platform is “an anarchic paradise” and criticized the French expenses as ‘misguided.’
“If a rustic is sad with an web service, the established observe is to begin a authorized motion in opposition to the service itself. Utilizing legal guidelines from the pre-smartphone period to cost a CEO with crimes dedicated by third events on the platform he manages is a misguided method. “
Whereas the Russian born tech billionaire acknowledged Telegram is “not perfect,” he maintained the corporate has taken down hundreds of thousands of posts and is busy remedying protocols to make the platform “safer and stronger.”
Telegram has seen big progress since its founding in 2013. It now boasts 950 million international customers. Durov blamed “growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”
The 39-year previous citizen of France and the United Arab Emirates was indicted on Aug. 28 in Paris on a number of expenses together with spreading little one abuse photos, drug trafficking and failure to adjust to legislation enforcement. He was ordered to publish bail equal to $5.5 million and positioned underneath court docket monitoring. He’s additionally not permitted to go away the nation.
In Thursday’s brief Telegram publish, Durov added particulars of what went down within the days after he was arrested in Paris in late August.
“Last month I got interviewed by police for 4 days after arriving in Paris. I was told I may be personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities didn’t receive responses from Telegram.”
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau mentioned in a press release final week outlining the wide-ranging expenses that Telegram exhibited an “almost total failure to respond to judicial requests.”
Durov disputes the fees and accusations, saying in his publish:
“Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests,” and “The French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance.”
