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Social media has gone bonkers since the arrest of Telegram's Founder and CEO Pavel Durov over the weekend. 

Even Elon Musk is waging a public outcry to free Durov from French custody. 

French law officials, in conjunction with the Centre for the Fight Against Cybercrime and the Anti-Fraud National Office, arrested Durov at Le Bourget airport outside of Paris on Saturday. 

Initially, the French media reported that Durov was arrested for fraud and money-laundering. French officials refused to officially state the specific reasons for Durov's arrest. 

According to French authorities, Durov’s arrest was made “in the context of a judicial investigation” which began on July 8, 2024, following an inquiry by the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office for cybercrimes. 

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The prosecutors’ changed their mind on Monday and released a specific list. 

According to a French law enforcement document given to CDM, the investigation is focusing on the following: 

• Complicity – web-mastering an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction in organized group, 
• Refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law, 
• Complicity – possessing pornographic images of minors,
• Complicity - distributing, offering or making available pornographic images of minors, in organized group,
• Complicity - acquiring, transporting, possessing, offering or selling narcotic substances, 
• Complicity - offering, selling or making available, without legitimate reason, equipment, tools, programs or data designed for or adapted to get access to and to damage the operation of an automated data processing system, 
•  Complicity – organized fraud, 
• Criminal association with a view to committing a crime or an offense punishable by 5 or more years of imprisonment,
• Laundering of the proceeds derived from organized group’s offences and crimes, 
• Providing cryptology services aiming to ensure confidentiality without certified declaration, 
• Providing a cryptology tool not solely ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration, 
• Importing a cryptology tool ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration,” reads the French prosecutors’ document. 

European governments have been concerned for some time that Telegram is being used to radicalize politics, defame public officials and challenge government officials’ coronavirus policies that led to restrictive lockdowns and mandated vaccination policies. They are also taking creative measures to put pressure on Telegram. 

The German government announced in October 2022 that it was issuing a fine of $5 million against Telegram for failing to comply with German law.

The Federal Office of Justice said Telegram FZ-LLC had not taken steps for reporting illegal content or even named an entity in Germany to receive official communication from the government. Both are required under German law that regulates large online platforms that operate in their country. 

German officials said they had repeatedly failed to serve papers to the Dubai-based Telegram, despite support from authorities in the United Arab Emirates.

A Germany-based law firm then stepped up and announced that it was representing Telegram in Germany, but that was not enough to prevent the fines issued, the Federal Office of Justice said.

Before that, the German government opened up a task force in December 2021 to investigate those using Telegram who called for the murder of officials advocating for restrictive coronavirus measures. 

German law enforcement conducted raids in Saxony in mid- December 2021after Telegram users discussed plans to kill the state Governor Michael Kretschmer and other government officials. The targeted users shared a rejection of vaccinations and lockdowns that these government officials were pushing. 

German federal police stated that Telegram was being used as a “medium for radicalization,” to target politicians, scientists and doctors for their role in tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

“The operators of messaging services and social networks bear a particular responsibility for acting against incitement to hatred and violence on their platforms,” German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said in a statement at the time. “These legal requirements and this responsibility can’t be avoided by trying to be unreachable.”

Dubai-based Telegram has positioned itself as an alternative to US-owned platforms and vowed to never disclose any information about Telegram users.

Durov stated during an interview with Tucker Carlson that he came up with the idea to launch an encrypted messaging app after coming under pressure from the Russian government when working at VK, a social network he created with his brother, and later sold it.

He created Telegram in 2013, but fled Russia in 2014 after he refused to hand over the encrypted user data to Russian officials or silence the Telegram communities opposing the Russian government. Today, Telegram has more than 900 million users. 

Durov then tried to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before choosing Dubai, which he has praised for its "neutrality.”

People "love the independence. They also love the privacy, the freedom…a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram,” Durov told Carlson.

Telegram has been able to shield itself from moderation laws so far while Western governments have been pressuring large platforms to remove what officials claim is “illegal” content, when in fact, the content is not always illegal, but may indeed challenge governments' policies. 

WhatsApp introduced worldwide limits on message forwarding in 2019 after it was accused of being used to spread false information in India that led to lynchings. 

A Virtual Global Task Force (VGT) was created in 2003 of International cybercrime agencies worldwide. It was the first international law enforcement task force created without any legislative act and created by five heads of cybercrime agencies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Since then, other countries have joined forces, including U.A.E. 

Initially, VGT was created to protect children and to tackle pedo-criminality online. The VGT has since expanded into investigating terrorism and those who are inciting violence. It often works with other federal agencies tracking money laundering, terrorism, and human trafficking because the nature of these crimes is trans criminal. 

It is very possible that VGT may now be expanding into investigating those who do not co-operate with law enforcement or go up against government policies. 

The question in Durov’s case is whether he, as Telegram’s CEO, is in fact involved in any of these specific French criminal allegations, or if the French authorities have arrested him because he has refused to comply with state laws where Telegram is operating.