Telegram CEO Pavel Durov arrested at French airport | BBC News

the Russian founder of the telegram messaging app paval durov has been arrested at a French airport Reports say authorities have been investigating a lack of moderators on the app which they say allows criminal activity to take place our correspondent will Vernon explains what we know about the arrest yeah this is coming from a number of uh French media Who quote sources in French law enforcement who say that pav dorov was arrested uh on Saturday evening last night at an airport near Paris he'd apparently arrived on his private yet uh from aaban and uh they are

saying that he was arrested on the basis of an AR arrest warrant uh that was issued in connection with telegram's failure to moderate illegal content and cooperate with law enforcement over drug trafficking child sexual content and fraud this is just coming from French media we should stress of course telegram would uh almost certainly deny all of those allegations but uh we'll have to see now uh whether he could appear in court today French media are saying he could be indicted uh today and of course uh what the reaction will be you mentioned that the Russian

foreign Ministry uh they've said that diplomats in Paris are urgently working uh in connection with his arrest um over the years we haven't heard a lot about him in public he's been quite a private person but more recently he did a long interview with taka Carlson um in America and so has come out more in public hasn't he yeah he has he was uh he was quite vocal uh when he was still in Russia you mentioned that in 2014 he fell out with the authorities according to him the Kremlin tried to basically take control uh

of the company they tried to force VK which is the company that he created Russia's version of Facebook to hand over uh personal data from uh of pro- Ukrainian protesters anti- Kremlin protesters according to DV the company refused to do that uh and he was basically forced to sell it to a company that had close links to the Kremlin uh VK is now almost totally under the control of the Russian Security Services that is our correspondent wian just a line that we're getting in from the AFP news agency which is the French news agency they

are saying that Russia says France are refusing to cooperate after the arrest of that telegram owner so that Russia saying France refusing to cooperate over the arrest now