Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of the encrypted messaging company Telegram, was detained last night as he stepped off his private plane from Azerbaijan on the tarmac at Paris' Le Bourget airport.

Durov, 39, a French-Russian citizen, was accompanied by his bodyguard and a woman.

He has a warrant pending against him from the French Justice on charges of failure to cooperate with the police and complicity in drug trafficking, crimes against minors and fraud for refusing to provide information on the exchanges of messages regarding these crimes and which would take place via Telegram messages.

Russian authorities are following the story and recalled how in 2018 some Western NGOs condemned a Russian court ruling to block the Telegram service. "Will the international community now demand Durov's release or will it bite its tongue?", the polemical question of the spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Moscow Maria Zakharova.

(Online Union)

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