Well I'm glad you're still here. I'm also glad I'm still here. Those of us who know you and who have followed you looked at our phones one morning in August I think, and it was Pavel Durov disappears in France, arrested, and then you know no one heard from you for several days. It was kind of—it was actually kind of a pivot point in the way I understand Europe, speaking for myself. So if you don't mind, I don't think you've done any interviews since then. What happened that day?
I arrived to Paris and I'm greeted in the airport by a few—
What were you doing here?
Just for touristic purposes. I was just hanging around for a couple of days and I was supposed to go to Finland after. I wasn't supposed to stay, there was no business meeting of any kind. I was greeted by policemen, they asked me certain questions, asked me to follow them.
Were you confused, like why are policemen meeting me at the airport?
Definitely at first. I thought there may be some additional security checks because of the Olympics or the Paralympics. Julia, my girlfriend, she was worried. She was asking me 'Is it all right?' I said 'It's all right, it's France, it's fine of course.' And then they read me a list of charges—I know, sixteen charges, all kinds of crimes. I was very confused at first because I have nothing to do with crime. I've never been convicted. We are a company that is trying to comply with the best standards. And at that moment I realized that it's not something I did, it's something other people did using the app I created, Telegram, which is used by a billion people. So probably some people—
Unfortunately not. I try my best to meet more. So yeah, and then I was put into a car with a small motorcade, with police cars with sirens, which is funny because in the previous countries that I visited I also was accompanied by motorcades because I was visiting the heads of states there. And here in France there was certain consistency, so I was greeted in the same way so to say.
I couldn't because they took my phone. I wasn't—
They immediately took your phone?
Yeah. I wasn't allowed to contact anyone except for my assistant, who I asked to find me some lawyers and reach out to certain friends that I have and try to understand what was going on. And then I spent four days in police custody, a building in the south of Paris that I think is run by the police customs—the customs police officers or department, whatever. And there I had to answer a lot of questions.
But you spent four days with no contact, no phone. In what kind of accommodations?
It was a seven square meter room, or seventy foot room. No windows, concrete block, a bed this narrow, no linen, no pillow, a mattress this thin—like a yoga mat, maybe one centimeter, half an inch—and that's it. And constantly blinking light, which was a bit annoying. A locked door, very securely locked.
Yes, it was a solitary cell so to say. There were no other people there.
So they put you in solitary confinement. Well, if there's a locked door, no pillow—
Well, it wasn't a prison or jail, it wasn't—
Legally speaking it wasn't.
So why were you being held against your will by the French government? Did they make it clear to you?
So I understood that they were worried about the alleged lack of response from Telegram towards the judicial requests coming from France, which turned out to be not true. Because we've never received a single legally binding legal request coming from France. So I was even more confused. I asked the French policeman, 'Why haven't you been following the European law and serving your legal request in the way prescribed by this law?' Right, it's defined by the Digital Services Act. It's there, you can Google the process, you can read the privacy policy of Telegram, it's easily accessible on the website. So why didn't you do it? And they didn't answer. But thank God they started to do it. And then they started to receive responses helping them to identify criminal suspects, meaning we would disclose IP address and phone number of people who were suspects in criminal investigations when we received court orders signed by a judge. This was something that we had in place since a year ago. Before that. So it's not something that the French have forced us to do, it's something that we already had in place. We had a company in Belgium processing these requests. Other countries have successfully been using this process, but somehow the French have ignored it completely. And this is why I was very surprised—why haven't you been doing this? But this is the process.
And to be clear, I think this is standard for social media companies. A company—whether it's Facebook or X or Snapchat or any of them—gets a court order from a country in which they have users, and the court order says, you know, we have reason to believe this person is a criminal, can we have the IP address? I think they all comply with that, correct?
Yes, well it's the DSA law. If you don't comply with it you can be fined, you can be banned. It's a question whether you want to continue providing your service in the European Union. But it only concerns the identification data—meaning IP address and in some cases phone number of the suspect. It has nothing to do with, for example, private messages of a person or other kinds of activity which is much more protected, much more private. Even if we wanted to, we wouldn't be able to disclose this information. But it's not required by the law.
But what you're describing is the state of play across Europe anyway for all the companies.
So because this is a normal thing that's already taking place—it's a process that everyone recognizes and it's been ongoing—you must be very confused as to why you're being held in this jail that they're not calling a jail. I stepped off an airplane and a bunch of cops showed up, took my phone away, threw me in the back of a car, took me to a cell—even if they pretended it was not a jail—wouldn't let me out and locked the door for four days without being able to contact my family. I'd be concerned. Were you concerned?
That was very surprising. I was shocked. At first I thought there was some mistake, they got the wrong guy. I thought—they read the list of charges, they have nothing to do with these crimes, like organized crimes, selling drugs, all those things. What do I have to do with that? Then I realized it's serious because they're not letting me out. They keep me there.
Okay but just for perspective, so you've got a billion users, it's a multi-billion dollar company, you started the company, you own the company. It's a huge company, it's one of the biggest social media companies in the world. So there's a process. If they think Telegram is doing something wrong, they send letters to your general counsel, or maybe get your phone number—I'm sure they could pretty easily get it, French intelligence I'm sure has everybody's phone number—and just call you and tell you. I've never heard of a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company getting arrested at the airport on grounds like this.
Well, you're very right. It never happened before. It's completely—
It's unprecedented and outrageous.
It's unprecedented, never. So it's something that I think was very unnecessary. Because on top of what you just described, I'm also a French citizen.
How did you wind up—because you're not from France originally.
Yeah I'm not from France originally, but I have certain ties to France and I was awarded this citizenship for using a specific process which took several years. But I didn't cut any corners. I had to pass the French exam test, I had to do certain things that you'd normally do.
Because you wanted to be a French citizen.
I wanted to. I love the country. It's a great country, it's a great culture. Of course these events are alarming and that's why I think it makes sense to speak about them. The most interesting part of it is that every French citizen has his or her personal home address in the passport. So the authorities of France know very well how to reach out to this person. On top of that, the consulate of France is located in the same building as the Telegram office in Dubai.
The same building. I've been to the building. It's not a huge building—no, not really—and it's just two floors below. So two floors from the French consulate. And I was a frequent visitor to the consulate. Whenever any French agency, authority, or representative of the government wanted to see me, they had no issue whatsoever arranging such meetings. And these meetings took place. I was happy just to go two floors below my office and have a conversation, or invite them to our office. So it's very, very strange what happened, because it could have been resolved by different means.
Well obviously they went way out of their way to humiliate you. They announced that they arrested you. I mean you were not obviously scanning Google for news stories about yourself because you couldn't. They couldn't. But the rest of us were. And they announced 'We've arrested Pavel Durov' and arms sales or drug sales or kiddie porn, or I mean who knows, horrible things. So they were trying to terrify you and humiliate you obviously.
This is something that was also very unusual. What my lawyers told me here in France is that normally the prosecutor's office is not that public. They're not issuing press statements every day and they're not commenting on their investigations. Which was not the case with me. They were very active.
Have you gone back? So you were locked up and you couldn't read the coverage, but have you gone back and read it? For those four days when you were being held?
When I was in police custody, I heard from one of the policemen. He told me every newspaper in the world is covering this and is mentioning you. And I said 'What's going on?' He said 'Well a lot of people are supportive.' But I asked him 'What do newspapers write about this case?' And he told me 'Everything but truth.' And I freaked out at that moment—everything but truth, seriously. When these four days ended and I was—
Can I just ask, what was your family doing? You've got children and parents, and what were they—
To be honest, this is the hardest part. Because I'm pretty stress resilient, so I can take care of myself. But being there, locked there, thinking about what's going on with my mom—she's very ill, she's very elderly, she was very worried as I learned after. What's going on with my kids. And this is something that gets to you.
And you couldn't contact them?
No, there's no way. Because you don't have access to any device, or you can't even read anything.
What did they think was going on?
They were very surprised and very confused and very worried.
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Just for perspective, for those who don't know your story, I won't tell the whole story—it's an amazing story. We did an interview with you maybe a year and a half ago in which you told your story. You're Russian, as people can probably hear in your voice. And sound like you're pretty happy in Russia, successful in Russia. You had to leave Russia for political reasons. The government was trying to use your company for its own purposes, you didn't want to be used, you left your own country and moved around, but wound up in Dubai and France. Were you ever arrested by Putin?
Okay. Just to put a finer point on this—I mean I'm not defending Putin—but you were arrested by the French government in the free West. Did you ever kind of see the irony there?
That was the most unexpected place to get arrested for me. Because before this trip I visited several countries. Some of these countries are considered in the West to be autocratic or authoritarian. But I had—and Telegram is very, very popular in these countries—I visited before coming to Paris and I had zero issues whatsoever, despite the fact that Telegram does zero censorship in terms of political speech and Telegram provides 100% privacy and confidentiality to its users in all these places.
So you do not extract personal information from your users, unlike our company.
Okay, but other companies—Facebook, I mean Meta—is very rich because they extract that personal data, right? That's a business model.
Yes, that's true. But I'm not attacking them—sorry, I am attacking them. But that's what they do. And you don't do that.
Yes, we don't have to do that. We came up with ways to monetize Telegram without having to abuse people's personal data this way. So Telegram became profitable last year, and very profitable—more than half a billion dollars in profit—without having to rely on methods like this, when you have to extract personal data and then use it for targeting ads for example. We have very successful paid subscription services on Telegram. We monetize in ways that are consistent with our values, that are voluntary.
Your users have to sign up for the things that make you money, not just stealing their data from them.
Exactly. And the service is free. And we just crossed one billion monthly user threshold or milestone.
Thank you. So it's growing very fast and we're very happy with what—we're very proud with what we do. Because if you look at any mobile messaging app right now, and we're number two after—you can guess which other app—we're the second most popular messaging app in the world. But most of the features that you use on a modern messaging app first appeared—first were created by Telegram—and then they were borrowed. We came up with a list of like a hundred such features. And those are not like small things, those are basic things that you know in every modern messaging app—like the way you respond to messages, the way you share links, the way you share documents, the text formatting, many, many things. Dozens of those first appeared on Telegram and then three to eight years after they've been copied by our rivals—one of which is larger than Telegram and others are smaller. But we are proud. We're proud that we've been able to shape what the industry is like today and define how billions of people communicate.
But I'm just going back to this story, which is by the way—I love your Slavic deadpan approach to this—it's like, it's crazy. I mean if Mark Zuckerberg or Elon got grabbed, you know, at the private part of De Gaulle airport, you'd be like 'Stop, like the world is ending.' But they grabbed you and people like, 'Oh he's got a Russian last name, it's fine, I'm sure there's a good reason.'
Well I hope it had nothing to do with my ethnicity, because that of course—
Are you joking? That would be very alarming. Because you got run out of Russia—by the way I just want to say that again—you got run out. You'd probably still be living there if you hadn't had to leave. So it's clearly you didn't participate in whatever they're mad about in Russia, you're gone. But it still can make you an easier target. I'm aware of that. Because people don't know my story, right? Not everybody watched our last interview and not everybody had—
Well I know you and obviously I like you, and I like what you're doing. I like your commitment to privacy and to the user, and I think the user's privacy should play a role in your thinking about a business. And that's my view, and you agree, most companies don't agree. So I'm on your side. But where were all the civil libertarians jumping to your defense? Like how can you just grab someone at the airport—well, who knows—why can you just do that, put him in jail for four days, take his phone? Where were your defenders?
Well, to be fair, some people did speak up and defended me. And actually there were more than ten million—or I think a very big number of people—who signed a petition to free me. So it was a very, very large movement.
I'm thinking more like the United Nations, you know, human rights watchdogs. Where are they? If this happened in North Korea—which, you know, I don't know, it hasn't—but if it happened there we'd be like 'Oh my gosh, it's Stalinism.' But it happens in France and you're like 'I'm sure there's a good reason.'
That's what makes this situation so complicated. Because we have to look at instances such as this one regardless of which jurisdiction I was born in, which jurisdiction is conducting this investigation. It should be completely unbiased, right? So it's very concerning.
And did they ask you questions about Russia during your four days of entertainment?
I think so, but it wasn't the focus of their questioning. The most questions were about the way Telegram operates, as if it's some kind of mystery. We're a big company, we are audited by a big four auditing firm. We work with the biggest financial institutions. So we're a big company and we spend millions of dollars every quarter on legal compliance. We pay law firms to receive the best advice in order to make sure we don't violate laws anywhere. And we operate in almost two hundred countries. So it was very, very surprising for me to get detained in Paris and learn that Telegram did something wrong or didn't process some requests. And then when I learned more about it, I realized that we did actually nothing wrong, because the law is very clear in describing the process that should be followed in order for this request to be processed, and it wasn't followed. And that's something that French prosecutors could have found out in about six minutes.
Obviously. That's the irony of it. You could Google 'Telegram police contact,' 'Telegram EU corporation,' whatever, and it would be instantly visible online for anybody who has access to Google. For some reason it wasn't used. And you have to think that there's a reason. Before I ask about that—how was the food in French prison by the way?
There was—I think they made some exception in relation to food for me, so it was fine. I was fine. It was pretty good. I don't eat meat, I don't eat fast food, so I was good with enough fish. And I could do my two hundred push-ups in the morning, like two hundred squats, and then I repeated it because I didn't have access to a gym. So I kept my routine there.
You were alone. Anybody push in your cell? It's just—the whole thing's incredible. So where does it stand now? We're in—I should say we're in France right now. You're still in France.
Many months later—eight months later, you're still in France. Why are you still here?
There is this limitation on my travel ability, so to say, which is called judicial control. Judicial control is when you can't leave the country freely because there is still an investigation going on and you're one of the suspects. I'm still being allowed to go to Dubai, and I returned last week from Dubai, and I will be going to Dubai later this week. But it's a very, very restricted, controlled process still.
What's the idea there? Since you own a multi-billion dollar company with a billion users—where would you go on planet Earth if you were going to run away?
Well that's exactly the source of my misunderstanding and my confusion here. I'm not running anywhere. And you know I've been to Dubai, came back. So it's very hard for me to understand my role in being here, because I'm required to answer some questions in relation to Telegram every like fifth month or fourth month. So the other three or four months I am just having to be here for reasons that are very hard for me to understand.
What's their argument? I'm just confused. So no one's actually—despite the headlines that flooded the world in August when you were arrested, detained, whatever they're calling it, put in a cell—you were not involved in kiddie porn, drug sales, organized crime, arms sales—I can't even remember but like the worst crimes in the world. No one is actually claiming you were involved in those crimes?
They're saying that you had—of your billion users, there were a few who may have been doing bad things. And you're saying—
I tried, but I didn't know that, it's not my fault.
Correct. It'd be like saying to Donald Trump, there are 350 million people in America, you know, one-third the number of users you have, and some of them are using kiddie porn or selling drugs or organized crime—we're putting you in jail for it. I mean that's—insane. So why are you still here? What is the claim against you?
I'm still trying to find out, to be honest. I'm still confused. At first they said, 'Oh you failed to respond to our legal requests and that's why you're complicit.' But first of all, it's not true that we didn't respond to legally binding legal requests. And secondly, it's a very extensive interpretation of complicity even for the French legal and judicial system. What I hear from my lawyers is that it's quite unprecedented. They had a couple of really small, niche apps that are like ten thousand times smaller than Telegram and were targeted specifically at criminals. They were nothing like—they didn't even have, these companies, they didn't even have bank accounts. They were a different profile. They were not audited by big four organizations. These companies have been prosecuted in France before and their founders, I understand, were accused of running a platform that is created for the purpose to facilitate crime. It's pretty much obvious that Telegram is not such a company, right? It has a billion users. Every eighth person on the planet is a user of Telegram, a regular one. And it's incomprehensible to assume that all these people—people are criminals. Everybody knows the story of Telegram very well, it's not something that was built for criminals. However, this reasoning, as far as I understand, is being used also in our case. They say that, alright, you created this app and this app was used by other people, they were criminals, and you didn't do enough to prevent them from doing what they were doing. Which again is contrary to what we see on other platforms. You have instances where problematic content exists despite the best efforts of social media platforms' moderation teams and so on and so forth. It's almost impossible to avoid that. But the claim itself, just conceptually, doesn't make sense.
I mean if someone commits armed robbery in Burgundy or Toulouse or Nice, can President Macron be arrested for that? Because it's his country, he runs the country, and he didn't do enough to stop the armed robbery in Toulouse. Like how can that stand? Why isn't he in jail? That's nuts.
Well the logic also eludes me so to say.
Back with the Russian understatement. No—it's—look, here's the inescapable conclusion I think from a bystander's perspective: they do this in public rather than just calling you, 'So we have a problem, we work it out,' or call your lawyers. They arrest you in public, they slander you, they try and tie you to the worst crimes man commits, and then they put you in jail. And so they're trying to sweat you, to intimidate you, to wear you down in order to get into the back door of Telegram so they can spy on people. Probably really for political reasons. That's what they're really worried about—a revolt in their own country. Every government's really worried mostly about its own population revolting against bad governance. Like that's their real fear. And they hate Telegram because it offers users privacy and that's a threat to them. And so they force you as the owner of the company to give them the keys. That's what it looks like.
Well to be clear, nobody approached me with the demand to give the so-called keys. Such keys don't exist technically. But if somebody approaches me and says 'we need the keys,' you'll be among the first to learn about it. But that hasn't happened.
Well actually the US government pushed you. I remember the FBI was trying to—
Because this is something governments want—not just of you but of all social media companies. You know what's interesting, in the US you have a process that allows the government to actually force any engineer in any tech company to implement a backdoor and not tell anyone about it. Using this process called the gag order. There are certain legal procedures—
Not tell his own employer about it?
Yes, exactly. If you tell your own boss you can end up in jail. Gag order. This actually—
