France fully lifts travel ban on Telegram founder – media
France has rescinded a travel ban on Telegram founder Pavel Durov, media outlets reported on Thursday, citing judicial sources.
Durov was detained in Paris last year and charged with complicity in crimes linked to Telegram users, including extremism and child abuse – allegations the tech tycoon denied. He has claimed that during his detention he was asked by the head of the French secret service to censor conservative voices in Romania, ahead of a controversial presidential election later nullified by Bucharest. He was released on €5 million ($5.4 million) bail under judicial supervision. A judge barred him from leaving France during the probe.
The latest ruling, reportedly issued on November 10, fully lifts the travel ban and removes the requirement for him to report regularly to police. In June he obtained a partial easing of restrictions, allowing him to stay in the United Arab Emirates, where Telegram is based, for up to two weeks at a time.
Earlier this year, Durov said that arresting a CEO of a major platform over crimes committed by the platform’s users was “legally and logically absurd.”
“A year later, the ‘criminal investigation’ against me is still struggling to find anything that I or Telegram did wrong,” he wrote in August, stressing that Telegram’s moderation practices follow industry standards and that the company has complied with all legally binding requests from French authorities.
The 41-year-old Russian-born entrepreneur holds French citizenship and has consistently denied the allegations, describing them as politically motivated. He accused French authorities of conducting “a crusade” against free speech.
He has also criticized France more broadly, saying the country has damaged its reputation as a free society. The CEO has extended that criticism to the European Union, arguing that the bloc is imposing increasingly tighter censorship and media restrictions.
Durov has a net worth of $14.7 billion, having increased $3.71 billion since the start of the year, placing him in 196th place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
