The hunt for Pavel Durov

PARIS — One of the first things Pavel Durov did when he was arrested on Aug. 24 at Paris’ Le Bourget airport was to tell the police he had flown to France to have dinner with President Emmanuel Macron.
A chauffeured black sedan was waiting for him outside, the Russian-born founder of the Telegram messaging platform told the three officers waiting for him at the gate, according to French newspaper Libération.  
Unimpressed, the officers escorted him to the offices of the anti-fraud brigade in the Parisian suburb Ivry-sur-Seine. Durov then used his phone call to reach out to Xavier Niel, one of France’s most prominent billionaires, a telecoms and tech tycoon who is the co-owner of Le Monde newspaper.
Neither appeal to the highest reaches of the French establishment seems to have helped him. Durov would spend the next four days in police custody, answering questions from investigators who would accuse him of being uncooperative with law enforcement and enabling criminal activity, including abuse against children.
Niel declined to comment when contacted by POLITICO but confirmed that the Telegram CEO had once visited the computing school he founded. “They’ve known each other for quite some time,” said a French security expert who was granted anonymity to speak freely. 
Macron’s office said the president had been unaware of Durov’s arrival and staying at his vacation home in a northern France beach town when the arrest was made. 
Much of the speculation about the reasons for Durov’s detention swirled around allegations that France was seeking to censor a platform known for its commitment to privacy. 
But, according to a legal document seen by POLITICO, the investigation that led to his arrest originated with a branch of the police known as the OFMIN, a recently created unit charged with looking into abuses against children.
Research into social networks shows that links to Telegram groups, in which allegedly criminal abuse is exchanged, are circulating openly on the internet. For example, dozens of links to corresponding Telegram pages can be found on the social media platform X every hour. 
In some cases, the accounts distributing the links disappear after a few hours. In other cases, they exist for days and share hundreds of hyperlinks to sensitive Telegram pages. The links to the groups are often distributed with unambiguous hashtags such as “Teens” or “MegaLinks,” referring to the file hosting service by the firm MEGA Cloud Services Limited used to share big amounts of data.
The inquest against Durov had its origins in a covert operation, in which an undercover agent using a pseudonym engaged with a suspected sexual predator on Telegram. In online messages, the suspect described how he engaged with underaged girls on an online gaming platform, then convincing them to send him “self-produced child pornography,” according to the document. 
The suspect also admitted to having raped a young girl, the document said.
When investigators requested that Telegram provide the real identity of the man who had just admitted to criminal offenses, the platform refused, according to the document.
That led the investigators to focus their attention on the men behind the platform. On Feb. 8, 2024, at the request of the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office, the OFMIN opened a preliminary investigation into Durov and his brother Nikolai Durov, who is in charge of the app’s technical infrastructure.
On March 1, the prosecutor’s office asked the police’s anti-cybercrime unit to collect all information about ongoing investigations into potential crimes that involved the use of Telegram. Meanwhile, the OFMIN kept track of the whereabouts of the Durov brothers and Telegram’s Vice President Ilya Perekopsky, who was also named in the case. 
Three weeks later, on March 25, warrants were issued for the Durov brothers, according to the document. POLITICO was unable to determine whether Perekopsky is also wanted by French police. 
At issue was what law enforcement officials described as Telegram’s unwillingness to answer requests for information. The National Gendarmerie alone counted 2,460 unanswered requests made to Telegram, according to Libération. A French justice official told POLITICO that the Gendarmerie’s figures were “indicative” but not “exhaustive.” 
Frustration ran beyond French borders: “Various Eurojust partners, notably Belgium, shared the same observation,” the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement, referring to the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, which coordinates cooperation in criminal investigations across EU countries.
On July 8, the Paris prosecutor’s office held a meeting at the city’s judicial court to move to the next step of the legal process: a formal judicial enquiry. By then, OFMIN had identified the suspect who had been in contact with its undercover agent, and the case had expanded “well beyond child pornography,” the document said.
On Aug. 24, French border police flagged to OFMIN and the police’s central directorate that Durov was flying to Paris from Baku, Azerbaijan on his white-and-wood interior Embraer Legacy 600 private jet with a bodyguard and Julia Vavilova, a 24-year-old crypto instructor and social media influencer from Dubai who is believed to be his girlfriend. 
He was arrested when he stepped off the plane.
Durov had not been behaving like a man on the run. 
According to a French security expert who requested anonymity, landing at Le Bourget airport is akin to knocking on the front door and saying, “it’s me.” 
Durov built much of his image, and a significant portion of his fortune, by championing an app celebrated for its commitment to privacy — a feature that has attracted political dissidents, battlefield generals and no shortage of criminals. But when it comes to his personal life, privacy doesn’t seem to be a priority. 
Durov’s whereabouts were meticulously documented in social media posts by Vavilova. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan; internet sleuths had little trouble tracking their helicopter rides or summer holiday jaunts. On TikTok and Instagram, Vavilova offered shots of the inside of the private jet they traveled on, the villas they rented and the nature parks they visited. 
During the four days in which he was interrogated by officers from the National Anti-Fraud Office (ONAF), Durov showed some signs of willingness to cooperate — including by handing in his cell phone for the purposes of the investigation. 
He defended himself by claiming Telegram had no issue responding to judicial requests. French authorities, he said, had not been asking through the proper channels. Durov added that he had met with the French foreign intelligence agency (DGSE) in Dubai, where he lives, and was in contact with the interior security agency (DGSI) on issues concerning counterterrorism. 
Durov spent more than 90 hours in the ONAF offices, answering questions and carefully reading transcripts during the day alongside his French lawyer David-Olivier Kaminski.
On Aug. 28, he was transferred to the Paris judicial court, a 38-story building inaugurated in 2020. A dozen Russian journalists were waiting on site, along with a handful of protesters outside. 
The billionaire was formally indicted on six charges including enabling criminal activity on his platform and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement. He was set free on €5 million bail, thus avoiding pre-trial detention.
After the judge’s decision was announced in the late hours of the day, Durov’s lawyer addressed reporters waiting in the nearly empty halls of the courthouse. “The only statement I wish to make is that Telegram is in conformity with every aspect of European norms on digital matters,” he said. “It is absurd to think that the head of a social network is being charged with criminal acts that do not concern him, either directly or indirectly.” 
The same evening, Durov was escorted through a backdoor and into a black van. He has been prohibited from leaving the country and must report to a police station twice a week.
Neither Telegram nor Durov’s legal representative responded to POLITICO’s requests for comment for this story. 
Durov’s arrest presents a challenge for France, which faces accusations of seeking to suppress free speech on platforms like Telegram, and for Macron, who has a long-standing relationship with the tech tycoon.
There is growing public speculation about whether Durov’s arrest may have deeper motivations — namely, a possible effort by Western powers to assert control over Telegram. During a meeting last week, a senior Western intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested that Telegram might also serve as a tool for recruiting spies, making Durov a figure of considerable interest to authorities. There is, however, no concrete evidence to support this theory.
Born in Saint Petersburg, Durov has said that he left Russia in 2014 amid growing tensions with the Kremlin. According to his account, he refused to hand over the contact information of Ukrainian pro-democracy activists on VKontakte, the social media platform he launched before Telegram, during the 2013-14 Euromaidan movement.
In addition to being both a French and Russian citizen, Durov is also a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, where he resides and operates Telegram, as well as the Caribbean island state of Saint Kitts and Nevis, which grants citizenship in exchange for investment.
Both Russia and the United Arab Emirates offered Durov diplomatic assistance — which he declined, a French government official told POLITICO. “The person concerned refused Russian consular protection and an Emirati consular visit but agreed that the Emirati embassy be kept up to date on his situation,” the official said. 
“We are in touch with the French authorities about this case and Pavel Durov’s representatives,” an official for the UAE diplomatic service told POLITICO
Durov, whose net worth is estimated to be more than $15 billion, has few friends among the bankers, investors and entrepreneurs who make up the Parisian elite. “It’s almost as if he was a nobody,” said a former French finance ministry official. 
But he does have a relationship with the French president that goes back to the early days of Macron’s presidency when he was going to great lengths to entice global tech leaders to invest in France.
As part of that effort, Macron offered Durov French citizenship. “We made the decision in 2018 I believe — it is a decision I fully take ownership of,” Macron said during a trip to Serbia on Aug. 29. “I gave Mr. Durov French citizenship, who learned French.”
The president added that the offer was part of a bigger program that included offering citizenship to athletes, artists and at least one other tech entrepreneur, Evan Spiegel, the American founder of Snap Inc., which owns the photo-sharing app Snapchat. “I think this is something that is very good for our country and I will continue to do so,” Macron said.
A senior French official who works on tech policy said cases like Durov’s were rare. “I’ve done a lot of work to help entrepreneurs, with stuff like granting visas, but the question of citizenship never came up,” said the official. “So the Durov case really was mind-boggling.” 
Durov was officially granted citizenship in 2021, according to the French official journal. A person who had spoken to the Telegram CEO after his arrest described him as speaking very little French. 
The tech tycoon has long had an interest in the Eternal City.
Irina Bolgar, his former partner and the mother of three of his children, said she met with Durov in Paris “many many times,” staying in luxury hotels including the Ritz and five-star Le Crillon palace, before the couple split in 2022. 
Durov has legally recognized at least five children, according to a 2024 Forbes report: two with his ex-wife Daria Bondarenko and three with Bolgar, with whom his relationship ended with proceedings in Switzerland where she lives. In a Telegram post, Durov also claimed to have had over 100 biological children via sperm donations.
Bolgar contemplated moving to Paris with her children in 2018 and signed an agreement to rent a €105,000 per month house in Neuilly-sur-Seine, an upscale Parisian suburb. Durov had signed a French “notary-certified agreement” to pay for all of Bolgar’s rental fees, she said.
Bolgar changed her mind and canceled the agreement prior to moving.
Until 2022, Bolgar continued to discuss with Durov the possibility of buying a home in France “for about €50 million” and “considered houses worth €100 million euros and above,” she added, either in and around Paris or in French towns bordering Switzerland in order to remain close to Geneva.
France has reached out to Switzerland over allegations made in the proceedings between Bolgar and Durov, according to people familiar with the case in France and Switzerland.
For now, however, Durov seems to have decided to make the best of his predicament. On Saturday, days after he was released, he was spotted by the French weekly Paris Match strutting along the Champs-Elysées.
Accompanied by Vavilova and dressed all in black, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, he was, by all appearances, enjoying the charms of the French capital.
Uwe Müller, Dirk Banse and Lennart Pfahler, journalists at Welt, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group, contributed to this report. Eva Hartog also contributed to this report.