The investigation into the arrest of Pavel Durov, the Telegram CEO, after his private jet exits Paris’ Le Bourget airport on Saturday evening

Telegram is not only a messaging platform, it’s also a social network and mostly used by people who don’t use end-to-end encryption. Telegram has a wide range of abilities, and may be able to handle content moderation and respond to lawful requests. This causes Pavel Durov to be in the center of all the governmental pressure.

The Telegram CEO was arrested as he exited his private jet at Le Bourget Airport outside of Paris at around 8 pm on Saturday evening. He was arriving in the country. According to TF1Info, the French outlet that first broke the news of his arrest, Durov was accompanied by a bodyguard and a woman. As best as anyone can tell, he spent the night in a French jail cell.

WIRED was diverted to France’s Ministry of Justice after OFMIN representatives refused to answer questions about the investigation. The full press release is expected to be published on Monday, according to an email from the Paris Prosecutor’s Office.

French prosecutors gave preliminary information in a press release on Monday about the investigation into Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, who was arrested suddenly on Saturday at Paris’ Le Bourget airport. Durov has not yet been charged with any crime, but officials said that he is being held as part of an investigation “against person unnamed” and can be held in police custody until Wednesday.

Durov founded Telegram in order to allow for secure communication inside and outside of authoritarian regimes. The app has become one of the most-used messaging Services in the world, with more than 900 million users.

The Durov case was investigated by the Section J3 prosecutor, L’evy Lavigne, prosecutor Laure Beccuau

The investigation began on July 8 and involves wide-ranging charges related to alleged money laundering, violations related to import and export of encryption tools, refusal to cooperate with law enforcement, and “complicity” in drug trafficking, possession and distribution of child pornography, and more.

The lack of cooperation on the platform was at the heart of the case, said a top police official in France. Particularly during the fight against child pornography.

Brian Fishman wrote that Telegram has ignored law enforcement requests to examine terror groups and child pornography for years.

Elon Musk mused on X that the future could include “being executed for liking a meme,” and self-proclaimed whistleblower Edward Snowden described Durov’s arrest an assault on “the basic human rights of speech and association.” Writing on X, Snowden said that Durov being detained was akin to “taking hostages as a means for gaining access to private communications.”

The president of Telegram was arrested on French soil, as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no way a political decision.”

The investigation was started by Section J3 and has involved collaborating with France’s Centre for the Fight against Cybercrime and Anti-Fraud National Office. “It is within this procedural framework in which Pavel Durov was questioned by the investigators,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau wrote in the statement.

Lavite said the case evokes debates about the balance of free speech and users protection on the one hand and the right to encryption on the other. But she notes that there is a lot of information about the investigation that is unknown and “a lot of blurry zones still.”

Telegram’s download boost in the App Store: from France to the U.S., a new tidal wave

On Monday afternoon, Telegram seemed to be receiving a download boost from the situation, moving from 18th to 8th place in Apple’s US App Store apps ranking. Global iOS downloads were up by 4 percent, and in France the app was number one in the App Store social network category and number three overall.