PARIS >> Pavel Durov, the Russian-born entrepreneur who founded the online communications tool Telegram, was charged today in France with a wide range of crimes for failing to prevent illicit activity on the app, and barred from leaving the country.

His indictment was a rare move by legal authorities to hold a top technology executive personally liable for the behavior of users on a major messaging platform, escalating the debate over the role of tech companies in online speech, privacy and security and the limits of their responsibility.

Durov, 39, was detained by French authorities on Saturday after a flight from Azerbaijan. He was charged today with complicity in managing an online platform to enable illegal transactions by an organized group, which could lead to a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

He was also charged with complicity in crimes such as enabling the distribution of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking and fraud, and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement.

Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, said in a statement that Durov had been ordered to pay bail of 5 million euros, or about $5.5 million. He was released from custody but must check in at a police station twice a week.

Telegram has played a role in multiple criminal cases in France tied to child sexual abuse, drug trafficking and online hate crimes, but has shown a “near-total absence” of response to requests for cooperation from law enforcement, Beccuau said.

Prosecutors around France, as well as legal authorities in Belgium and other European countries, “have shared the same observation,” she said, leading organized-crime prosecutors to open an investigation in February on the “potential criminal liability of executives at this messaging platform.”

Durov’s case has intensified a long-simmering debate about free speech on the internet and the responsibility of tech companies to police what their users say and do on their platforms. Governments, especially in the European Union, are increasingly pressuring tech companies to address child safety, terrorism, disinformation and the spread of other harmful content.

That has pitted free-speech supporters such as Durov, who takes a hands-off approach to moderating Telegram, and Elon Musk, who owns the social platform X, against regulators and policymakers. On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron of France dismissed accusations that Durov’s arrest was an example of government censorship, saying that “in a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework.”

Durov now joins a small list of high-ranking tech figures who have been indicted in connection with crimes committed by users of their services, including Ross W. Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road online black market, and Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, who pleaded guilty last year to U.S. money-laundering violations that took place on his cryptocurrency platform.

Telegram did not respond to a request for comment today. After Durov’s arrest, the company, which is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, said that it abides by EU laws and that “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”

The charges against Durov could make other social networks and internet platforms more aggressive in moderating their sites to ensure that they do not run afoul of laws, said Daniel Lyons, a professor of internet regulation at Boston College Law School.

“As a CEO, seeing that you are personally put at risk, I’m going to have much lower tolerance for speech and transactions at the margins,” he said. “It would at least make me question where I’m traveling and why.”

But Daphne Keller, a professor of internet law at Stanford Law School, said Durov and Telegram were conspicuously different from major platforms such as Meta and Google, which have more robust trust and safety teams that take down illegal content and respond to law enforcement requests.

“I continue to assume that the reason they can indict is because Telegram forfeited their immunity by not taking down things they were notified about,” she said. “If that’s true, this indictment seems like a not-surprising next step.”

In Durov’s case, Telegram did not answer a request from the French authorities to identify one of its users in an investigation into child sexual abuse materials, a person with knowledge of the matter said. On March 25, authorities issued a search warrant for Durov, as well as a search warrant for his brother, Nikolai, who helped create Telegram, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Politico earlier reported the details of the investigation.

In France, complex criminal cases like the one against Durov are initiated by prosecutors but ultimately handled by special judges with broad investigative powers, who charge defendants when they believe that the evidence points to serious wrongdoing. The magistrates can later drop the charges if they do not believe that the evidence is sufficient to proceed to trial, and cases can take years — meaning a swift resolution of Durov’s case is unlikely.

Telegram, which Durov founded in Russia in 2013, has more than 900 million users. It works as a messaging app, similar to WhatsApp or iMessage, but also hosts groups with up to 200,000 users and has other channels with broadcasting features to help reach even larger audiences. Light oversight of content on the platform has helped people living under authoritarian governments to communicate, but has also made the app a haven for harmful content.

Durov founded a social network, Vkontakte, in Russia in 2006, and it became more popular than Facebook. He left the country in 2014 after, he said, authorities pressured him to hand over data about Vkontakte’s users, which he declined to do. He now has citizenship in France and the United Arab Emirates, according to Telegram.

Durov has infused Telegram with an anti-authority ethos and commitment to free speech. He has said his worldview was informed by his experience in Russia, and he came to believe strongly that governments should put few restrictions on people’s online speech and actions and that digital privacy trumped security.

“Privacy, ultimately, is more important than our fear of bad things happening,” he said in 2015.

David Kaye, a former United Nations monitor for global freedom of expression, said Durov’s case could have wide-ranging consequences, particularly if authoritarian countries used it as a precedent to go after senior tech executives.

“The Durov indictment is a very big deal,” he said. “The question is whether it’s a big deal that signals a new era of government restriction of online expression and pressure on platforms.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2024 The New York Times Company