According to BlockBeats, on September 6, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov posted on X: Last month, I was questioned by the police for four days after arriving in Paris. I was told that I might be personally responsible for the illegal use of Telegram by others because the French authorities had not received a response from Telegram. This is surprising for the following reasons:
1. Telegram has an official representative in the EU who is responsible for accepting and responding to EU requests. Its email address is public and anyone in the EU can get it by searching “Telegram EU law enforcement address” on Google.
2. The French authorities have multiple ways to contact me for assistance. As a French citizen, I am a frequent visitor to the French Consulate in Dubai. Some time ago, upon request, I personally helped them set up a hotline with Telegram to deal with terrorist threats in France.
3. If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the standard approach is to bring legal action against the service itself. Using laws from before the smartphone era to charge a CEO with third-party crimes committed on the platform he manages is a simplistic approach. Developing technological means is hard enough. Innovators would not develop new tools if they knew they could be held personally liable for potential misuse of those tools.
