Over more than a decade, the founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram has amassed various different citizenships, something that’s only added to the mystery surrounding his detention in France.
Those passports provided Pavel Durov protection after he created and ran Telegram as a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist. The app has been used by some to plan protests in repressive governments like in Iran and his native Russia. However, Western governments allege Telegram aided the work of drug traffickers, money launderers, militant groups and child pornographers.
“To be truly free, you should be ready to risk everything for freedom,” Durov once wrote on Instagram, interspersed between images of himself shirtless with the skyscrapers of Dubai or the ruins of Mada’in Saleh in Saudi Arabia behind him.
That risk now appears to have caught up with him, despite passports from Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, and his wealth, estimated by Forbes to be $15.5 billion.
Durov was freed from French custody Wednesday after being arrested Saturday at Paris-Le Bourget Airport. Allegations include that his platform is being used for child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, fraud and abetting organized crime transactions, and that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law. He is expected to appear in court later Wednesday.
Durov, 39, apparently began seeking other citizenships more than a decade ago. The impetus came, according to him, from a dispute over control of VKontakte, “In Contact,” known as VK, a social media website that at the time outpaced Facebook in Russia.
Russian security services had moved to block pages connected to a Ukrainian protest movement that helped oust the country’s Kremlin-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, from power. Durov posted online what appeared to be documents from Federal Security Service, or FSB, demanding personal data on groups linked to the protests.
After resigning on April Fool’s Day, first apparently in jest, Durov left VK for good. He reportedly obtained a residency visa to Dubai, the business hub of the United Arab Emirates. He also received a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport, reportedly by contributing $250,000 to the Caribbean nation’s sugar industry.
Saint Kitts and Nevis remains popular as a tax haven for the wealthy and for those with passports requiring onerous visas to travel to other countries.
Durov said in a VK post in 2017 that he received a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport in the spring of 2013 and called it “a convenient thing, as it allows to travel to the EU and Britain without visas.”
He added that he had never actually been to the Caribbean island nation — nor did he have any plans to travel there — and that “one can get the passport without leaving Europe.”
By 2017, Durov was living full-time in Dubai, with his Telegram office working from Dubai Media City.
“I love it here,” he told Bloomberg at the time. “It’s developing so fast, like a start-up.” The news organization put his wealth at the time at $300 million and 2,000 bitcoins — a cryptocurrency that saw its value skyrocket in the time since.
Sometime in this period, the United Arab Emirates granted Durov citizenship — a rarity in a country where 90% of its population are foreigners with no path to citizenship.
The UAE has not explained why it granted Durov citizenship, though its state-run WAM news agency on Tuesday publicly acknowledged his citizenship and asked France to provide him “with all the necessary consular services in an urgent matter.” Under Emirati law, investors, doctors, specialists and intellectuals can be put on the path to citizenship, if approved by one of the country’s seven rulers, a crown prince or the federal government in his autocratic nation.
Durov had been photographed in a meeting with Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai, in 2021. A WAM report at the time described Telegram as being “globally headquartered in Dubai” and worth more than $20 billion.
The UAE, Dubai in particular, has been trying to woo internet and e-commerce firms for years. Durov joined an advisory council to its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, as well. Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala the same year invested $75 million into Telegram, as did another Abu Dhabi firm.
His French citizenship remains more murky.
Durov officially became French citizen in 2021, and his name was published in the naturalization section of France’s Official Gazette on August 25 of that year. In May 2022 he officially changed the transliteration of his name in French to Paul du Rove, according to a government decree.
Details of Durov’s French naturalization process — a long and cumbersome bureaucratic ordeal for most — are sealed from public scrutiny because of French privacy practices.
Durov did not appear to meet standard requirements of legally living in the country for two to five years or having family members who were French, but may have qualified for a rare citizenship route for specially “merited foreigners.” According to the French government, this applies to French-speaking foreigners who “contribute through their merited action to the global influence of France and the prosperity of its international economic relations.”
Durov and French President Emmanuel Macron met in 2018, and had a discussion like those the French president has regularly with global business leaders about developing their activities in France, according to an official familiar with the meeting.
Durov later sought French citizenship via a request to the French Foreign Ministry, not via Macron directly, the official said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be publicly named speaking about private presidential meetings.
France and the UAE maintain a close military relationship, with French forces operating a naval base in Abu Dhabi and Emirati forces using Leclerc tanks and Rafale fighter jets. Macron also is seen to be close to Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi. The arrest sparked a faked video online late Tuesday, falsely attributed to the Al Jazeera satellite news network, that an arms deal between the countries was at risk.
But like so much with Durov, details remain murky. He had stopped interviewers at times from photographing his offices and other areas, controlling his image to the outside world.
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Associated Press writers Barbara Surk in Nice, France, and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.