Telegram CEO Pavel Durov charged by French prosecutors
Telegram's CEO and founder Pavel Durov had been in French custody since Saturday evening.
Pavel Durov, the CEO and a co-founder of the news and messaging app Telegram, has been charged in France with enabling various forms of criminality in the app, French prosecutors said Wednesday.
One of the charges — complicity in administering an online platform permitting illicit transactions by an organized group — carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros ($555,750), prosecutors said.
It is one of the few times the CEO of a major internet platform has been charged over allegations of criminal failure to moderate what users do on its platform.
In a statement Wednesday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Telegram had almost completely failed to respond to its legal requests for user data in prosecuting cybercrime cases.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in Barcelona, Spain, in 2016.Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg via Getty Images fileProsecutors alleged numerous offenses in Wednesday's statement, including refusal to communicate with authorities, "complicity" in offenses related to child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, and implementing encrypted technology without proper declaration.
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