At first people expected him to be jailed, because he obviously has means to leave France and never get caught again, but then analysts pointed out that he knew there was a warrant in France to get him and that he decided to land in France anyway, so they raised the question that maybe he came voluntarily in order to strike a deal with French authorities.
The fact that he's now free from custody sounds like this analysis was likely the right one.
Or they released him because they're required to by law? Normally they need to release you after 24h, but in some cases of organized crime or terrorism, they can extend it to 72+h.
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...
They want Telegram not him.
They actually want him to comply with the French law (a country which he is a citizen of) and timely remove the illegal content that he's been made aware of.
If all Telegram chats were e2e encrypted, he'd have much more plausible deniability. But they aren't, so he is required by law (as a French citizen) to remove the offending content.
The best thing he can do is stay, serve his sentence/pay his fine, and improve Telegram to have e2e encryption by default (or better yet, mandatory), and focus on e2e encryption for group chats.
His resistance to do that over the years, along with his insistence that somehow Telegram is super secure make me wonder if he's not already been compromised.
Do you have a confirmation for that or this is just your guess? Maybe they want access to all Telegram messages.
The allegations are public, and that's what the allegations state. I can't and don't want to speculate on the "true" motives of the French authorities. Al Capone was also initially held only on taxes charges.
> The investigation concerns crimes related to illicit transactions, child sexual abuse, fraud and the refusal to communicate information to authorities. The arrest warrant was issued by OFMIN, a French child protection agency, the group’s secretary general said in a post on LinkedIn.
https://www.tf1info.fr/justice-faits-divers/info-tf1-lci-le-...
And some investigative journalism on the type of illegal activities going on in Telegram.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1828526705306411410.html
I am all for privacy of communication, but due to Telegram's insistence of not encrypting everything, this is easy to see/verify by authorities, and issue a takedown notice.
> Maybe they want access to all Telegram messages.
And maybe not. Do you have proof that they want that, or we are going to be speculating here? Cause, as I said, the arrest warrant is public and the allegations are public. I'd prefer not to speculate and focus on the facts.
P.S
If we are going to speculate here, my feeling is that the French authorities found that Telegram is a Russian held backdoor/honeypot or want to disrupt Russian war communications. They need some time to with Durov in custody, so they arrest him on charges they can arrest him on: failing to remove illegal content all the while letting Meta, X, and Rumble and others get away with the same.
That would compromise the feature of open-to-everybody groups right? Right now I can download telegram on my phone, do a quick search and view an open group where local drug dealers post their wares (with pictures), weapons are being sold illegaly, etc. I always thought this was the "illegal content" they were referring to
Do you have a reference for this claim? I've read this here or there, but always without any evidence. Was the arrest warrant public before he decided to land in France?
Personally I think the legal basis for his arrest is just so thin that bail was granted. After all he is not personally responsible. The buck stops with him, sure but he didn't personally partake in any of the alleged activity on telegram.
Keeping a person in custody is a very heavy measure that a judge won't grant lightly.
So far as I can tell the French didn't say much of anything, which is why there is so much confusion about what happened.
I thought he was arrested for not complying with search/trace/takedown warrants against people who were (possibly) doing illegal activity. If that is true he presumably would be responsible.
He's not accused of personally partaking in anything, the arrest warrant is about Telegram as a platform not working on removing content that broke the law, even when notified about it.
Telegram can easily replace him as CEO with someone else after all.
He can't run away without looking guilty.