For more than a decade, Founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram He has acquired multiple citizenships, adding to the mystery surrounding his detention in France.
Those passports provided protection for Pavel Durov when 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 such as Iran and his native Russia. However, Western governments allege that Telegram facilitated the work of drug traffickers, money launderers, extremist groups and child pornographers.
“To be truly free, you must be willing to risk everything for freedom,” Durov once wrote on Instagram, where he posted shirtless photos of himself, with Dubai’s skyscrapers behind him or the ruins of Madain Saleh in Saudi Arabia.
That risk appears to have caught up with him now that he holds passports from Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates and St Kitts and Nevis and has a net worth estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion.
Durov was detained at Le Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday as part of a wide-ranging judicial investigation launched last month and was released on Wednesday (August 28, 2024) after four days of questioning. Investigating judges filed preliminary charges on Wednesday night and ordered him to post a bail of 5 million euros and report to a police station twice a week.
The allegations against Durov also include that his platform is being used to transmit child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, and Telegram has refused to share information or documents with investigators even when required by law.
Durov, 39, began looking for a second citizenship more than a decade ago. According to him, the impetus came from a dispute over control of VKontakte, “In Contact”, better known as VK, a social media website that at the time had overtaken Facebook in Russia.
Russian security services had moved to block pages linked to Ukraine’s protest movement, which helped oust the country’s pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovich from power. Durov posted online what appeared to be a document from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, demanding personal data of groups linked to the protests.
After resigning on April Fools’ Day, apparently as a joke, Durov left VK forever. He reportedly obtained a residence visa for Dubai, the business hub of the United Arab Emirates. He also reportedly obtained a passport to St. Kitts and Nevis by contributing $250,000 to the Caribbean nation’s sugar industry.
St Kitts and Nevis is popular as a tax haven for the wealthy and for those with passports that require hefty visas to travel to other countries.
Durov said in a VK post in 2017 that he had 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 the UK without a visa”.
He added that he has never actually been to the Caribbean island nation – nor does he have any plans to go there – and that “anyone can get a passport without going outside Europe”.
As of 2017, Durov was living full-time in Dubai, and his Telegram office was operating from Dubai Media City.
“I love living here,” he told Bloomberg at the time. “It’s growing so fast, like a start-up.” The news organization estimated his wealth at the time at $300 million and 2,000 bitcoins — a cryptocurrency whose value has skyrocketed since that time.
During this period, the United Arab Emirates granted citizenship to Durov – a rarity in a country where 90% of the population are foreigners with no path to citizenship.
The UAE has not explained why it granted citizenship to Durov, though its state-run WAM news agency on Tuesday publicly acknowledged his citizenship and asked France to provide him with “all necessary consular services in an urgent matter.” Under Emirati law, investors, doctors, experts and intellectuals can be put on a path to citizenship if approved by one of the country’s seven rulers, a crown prince or the autocratic nation’s federal government.
Durov was photographed in a meeting with Dubai Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum in 2021. A WAM report at the time described Telegram as being “globally headquartered in Dubai” and having assets of over $20 billion.
The UAE, particularly Dubai, has been trying to lure internet and e-commerce companies for years. Durov also joined the advisory council of its ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. That same year, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala invested $75 million in Telegram, as did another Abu Dhabi firm.
His French citizenship still remains unclear.
Durov officially became a French citizen in 2021, and his name was published in the naturalization section of the Official Gazette of France on August 25 of that year. In May 2022 he officially changed the transliteration of his name into French to Paul du Rove, in accordance with a government order.
The details of Durov’s French citizenship process – which is a lengthy and cumbersome bureaucratic process for most people – have been kept secret from public scrutiny due to French privacy practices.
Durov appears not to have met the standard requirements of having legally lived in the country for two to five years or having family members who are French, but may have qualified for a rare citizenship pathway specifically for “qualified foreigners.”
According to the French government, it applies to French-speaking foreigners who “through their qualified work contribute to France’s global influence and the prosperity of its international economic relations”.
According to an official familiar with the meeting, Durov and French President Emmanuel Macron met in 2018, and the discussions were similar to those the French president has with global business leaders about developing their activities in France.
The official said Durov later sought French citizenship, not directly through Mr. Macron but by requesting it through the French Foreign Ministry.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the president’s private meetings.
France and the UAE have close military ties, with the French army operating a naval base in Abu Dhabi and the Emirati army using Leclerc tanks and Rafale fighter jets. Mr Macron is also believed to be close to Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi. The arrest sparked a fake video online late on Tuesday, falsely attributed to the Al Jazeera satellite news network, which said an arms deal between the countries was at risk.
But as with Durov, the details are still unclear. He has at times prevented interviewers from taking photographs of his offices and other areas, in a bid to control his image to the outside world.