Pierluigi Paganini August 29, 2024

French prosecutors charged CEO Telegram Pavel Durov with facilitating various criminal activities on the messaging platform.

French prosecutors have formally charged Telegram CEO Pavel Durov with facilitating various criminal activities on the platform, including the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), enabling organized crime, illicit transactions, drug trafficking, and fraud. The authorities announced a formal investigation of Durov following his arrest.

Durov was indicted and French authorities released under judicial supervision with a ban on leaving the French territory.

Telegram CEO spent more than eighty hours in police custody before being charged on Wednesday, August 28, with twelve offences, including “complicity in administering an online platform to enable illicit transactions as part of an organized gang,” refusal to provide necessary information for lawful interceptions, “complicity in the dissemination of child pornography by an organized gang,” drug trafficking, fraud, criminal association, and money laundering by an organized gang. Durov has been placed under judicial supervision and is prohibited from leaving French territory.

Pavel Durov was also “placed under judicial supervision, including the obligation to post a €5 million bail, the obligation to report to the police station twice a week, and the ban on leaving French territory ,” said the Paris prosecutor’s office on Wednesday.

Durov was charged with refusing to provide information required by authorities to carry out legal interceptions. To avoid pretrial detention Durov must pay a €5 million bail and cannot leave France, and must report to authorities twice a week. The arrest is linked to a judicial investigation opened in France in July 2024, focused on Telegram’s lack of moderation, which have allowed extremist and malicious activities to proliferate on the platform.

Pavel Durov faces additional charges related to the provision and handling of cryptographic services and tools. One of the charges involves the supply of cryptographic services specifically designed to ensure confidentiality without obtaining the necessary declaration of conformity. This charge suggests that Durov may have facilitated or allowed the use of encryption services that bypass the regulatory requirements set by authorities, potentially enabling secure communications that are difficult for law enforcement to monitor.

Another charge against Durov pertains to the supply and import of cryptographic means that do not solely serve the functions of authentication or integrity control, again without the required prior declaration. This charge implies that Durov is accused of importing or providing encryption tools that go beyond basic security functions, potentially enabling more complex or opaque forms of communication without adhering to the legal protocols for such technologies.

Telegram defined absurd “to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the abuse of that platform.” The company highlighted its commitment and efforts to ban groups and channels related to child abuse.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal further revealed that Durov had lunch with the French president six years ago, signaling his significance on the global stage. However, the previous year, his phone was hacked by spies from France and the United Arab Emirates, indicating that he was both courted and targeted by governments due to his influence and the platform’s role in global communications.

“In 2017, the year before the meeting with Macron, French spies targeted Durov in a joint operation with the United Arab Emirates that hacked his iPhone, according to people familiar with the matter. The spy operation, which also hasn’t been previously reported, was code-named “Purple Music,” the people said. French security officials were acutely concerned about Islamic State’s use of Telegram to recruit operatives and plan attacks.” reported the Wall Street Journal. “Governments have targeted Durov because of the groups that were drawn to his app, which range from pro-democracy demonstrators and dissidents to Islamist militants, drug traffickers and cybercriminals.”

The Financial Times revealed that “EU is investigating whether Telegram breached EU digital rules by failing to provide accurate user numbers, as officials push to bring the controversial messaging app under stricter supervision.”

“EU legal and data experts suspect that the app has understated its presence in the EU to stay under a 45mn user threshold, above which large online platforms are subject to a swath of Brussels regulations designed to check their influence.”

Pierluigi Paganini

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(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Telegram)