Arrested last summer in France, Pavel Durov has since been indicted for twelve offences related to the use of Telegram by criminals. The founder and boss of the messaging service is accused of complicity in the possession and distribution of child pornography images, illegal transactions in an organized gang, and money laundering in an organized gang.
These are obviously very serious offences, which could earn the Franco-Russian billionaire years in prison. Presented to the investigating judges last December, the latter said he was "personally disgusted [by these offences], which are bad for society and business". Business that is not going so badly, by the way: Telegram actually generated its first annual net profit last year.
According to the comments reported by AFP, Pavel Durov assured that he did not create Telegram (in 2013) for criminals. However, he agreed that their presence had indeed increased. And that before his arrest, moderation was not necessarily focused on France. Asked about the presence of a public group called “Livraison shit beuh Paris”, he admitted that Telegram moderators did not know the word “shit”…
“Our teams have been trying to moderate this type of search for several years, these searches are mainly focused on markets and languages where Telegram is most popular”, he explained. But there you go, France was not on the list. "As soon as we became aware of it, we improved a lot," he says.
These moderation efforts in France — under pressure from the courts — paid off: Telegram responded to 4 legal requests in the first quarter of 2014, compared to 673 in the last quarter! In addition, the messaging service provided the authorities with "identifying information concerning more than 10,000 users" worldwide. The judges retorted that this was not much, considering the number of users of the application (950 million).
In September, Pavel Durov had pointed out that Telegram could share IP addresses and telephone numbers with the courts.
Source: AFP
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