Pavel Durov was arrested at the end of August at Le Bourget airport outside Paris and was released after four days of police questioning. He has been accused, on preliminary grounds, of not acting against criminals using Telegram to commit crimes.
In a long post on his own messaging service, his first comments since the arrest, Durov writes that it is surprising that he is being held responsible for others' content.
Durov: Completely untrue
"Using laws written before the era of smartphones to accuse a CEO of crimes committed by third parties on the platform he is responsible for is a misguided approach," he writes.
He also comments on claims that Telegram is an anarchist paradise, calling them "completely untrue".
"We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day."
Pavel Durov denies French accusations that Paris did not receive any responses from the company to its requests. He claims that he personally helped French authorities establish contact with Telegram to "handle the threat of terrorism in France".
Admits weakness
At the same time, he admits that the messaging service's steadily increasing number of users – now 950 million worldwide, according to Durov – has caused growing pains, making it easier for criminals to abuse the platform.
"That's why I've made it my personal goal to see to it that we significantly improve things in this regard," he writes, adding that more details on how this will be done will be announced later.
"I hope that the events in August will result in Telegram – and the social media industry as a whole – becoming a safer and stronger place," writes Durov.
Telegram's CEO and co-founder Pavel Durov was surprisingly arrested at an airport outside Paris on August 24, when he landed with his private plane.
Tech billionaire Durov is a citizen of Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and the island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. He left his home country Russia in 2014.
He was released on Wednesday, but is not allowed to leave the country. The 39-year-old is suspected of not having acted against criminals using the platform to commit crimes.
The investigation is led, among others, by Ofmin, a part of the French judiciary that works against exploitation, violence, and abuse of children and young people.
Through his lawyer, Durov denies all allegations, which are described as absurd.
