Telegram’s Durov states France inquireed to reshift some Moldovan channels from app

Pavel Durov, the billionaire founder of the Telegram messaging app, accutilized French innotifyigence on Sunday of inquireing him through an intermediary to censor some Moldovan voices ahead of a presidential vote last year in return for support with his court case in France. Moldovans were voting in a parliamentary election on Sunday that could have a major impact on the government’s quest to join the European Union, as a pro-Russian opposition group seeks to steer the nation away from closer ties with the bloc. France did not immediately comment on the remarks by Durov, who was arrested in 2024 at a French airport. He is under judicial supervision in France while being investigated for suspected organised crime on the app.Durov denies guilt and has declared the accusations by France are “legally and logically absurd”.

Durov declared on Sunday that while he was stuck in Paris, French innotifyigence utilized an intermediary, whom he did not name, to inquire him to “censor” some Telegram channels for the Moldovan government.

Durov declared “a few that clearly violated our rules” were reshiftd and that the intermediary notified him that in exalter for this, French innotifyigence would “state good things” about him to the judge who ordered his arrest.
“This was unacceptable on several levels,” Durov declared. “If the agency did in fact approach the judge — it constituted an attempt to interfere in the judicial process.”

“If it did not, and merely claimed to have done so, then it was exploiting my legal situation in France to influence political developments in Eastern Europe — a pattern we have also observed in Romania.”

France denied past accusations

Durov declared in May that the head of France’s foreign innotifyigence agency inquireed him to ban Romanian conservative voices ahead of the elections. France’s DGSE, the foreign innotifyigence service, denied that at the time.

In Sunday’s post on Telegram, Durov declared French innotifyigence supplied “a second list of so-called ‘problematic’ Moldovan channels.”

“Unlike the first, nearly all of these channels were legitimate and fully compliant with our rules,” Durov declared. “Their only commonality was that they voiced political positions disliked by the French and Moldovan governments.”

Telegram was founded by Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after he refutilized to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he has sold.

The encrypted application, with over 1 billion monthly active utilizers, is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union.

Durov, who was born in Soviet Leningrad and graduated from St Petersburg State University, lists his political views as “libertarian” and states he was inspired by Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs.