Telegram Chief Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

Paris: Pavel Durov, billionaire co-founder and chief executive of Telegram, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening for alleged offences related to the popular messaging app, media reports said, citing police officials.

Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, TF1 TV said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France.

The 39-year-old is understood to have been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at about 8 p.m. local time.

Durov was expected to appear in court on Sunday.

The Russian-born entrepreneur lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and holds dual citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates.

Durov, who is estimated by Forbes to have a fortune of $15.5bn (£12bn), left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Russia’s embassy in France is taking “immediate steps” to clarify the situation.

Citing a representative from the Russian embassy in France, TASS reported there had been no appeal from Durov’s team to the embassy, but that it was proactively taking “immediate” steps.

Durov and his brother Nikolai founded the messaging app in 2013, and it has about 900 million active users.

Telegram offers end-to-end encrypted messaging, and users can also set up “channels” to disseminate information quickly to followers.

France’s OFMIN, an agency tasked with preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov as the coordinating agency in a preliminary investigation into alleged offences, including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime and promotion of terrorism, one of the sources close to the case said.

“Enough of Telegram’s impunity,” said one of the investigators, adding they were surprised Durov came to Paris knowing he was a wanted man.