Pavel Durov Speaks Out for the First Time Since His Politically-Motivated Arrest in France

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Well, I'm glad you're still here.

I'm also glad I'm still here.

Yes.

I mean, those of us who know you and who have followed you looked at our phones one morning in August, I think, and it was Pavel Derv disappears in France, arrested.

And then, you know, no one heard from you for several days.

It was, it was kind of,

it was actually kind of a pivot point in the way I understand Europe, speaking for myself.

So if you don't mind, I don't think you've done any interviews since then.

What, like, what

happened that day?

The events of the day.

Let's start there.

August last year.

August last year, I arrived to Paris and I'm greeted in the airport by

what were you doing here?

I just

for touristic purposes, I was just hanging around for a couple of days, and then I was supposed to go to Finland after.

And

I wasn't supposed to stay.

There was no business meeting.

of any kind

and i was greeted by policemen they asked me certain questions, asked me to follow them.

Were you confused?

Like, why are policemen meeting me at the airport?

Definitely.

At first, I thought there may be some additional security checks because of the Olympics, of the Paralympics, something's going on.

Julia, my girlfriend, she was worried.

She was asking me, is it all right?

I said, it's all right.

It's France.

It's Fost.

Of course.

And then they read me a list of charges, like, I don't know 16 charges, all kinds of crimes.

I was very confused confused at first because, like, I have nothing to do with crime.

I've never been convicted.

I have, you know, we are a company that is trying to comply with

the best standards.

And

so,

at that moment, I realized that it's not something I did, it's something other people did using the app I created, Telegram, which is used by a billion people.

So, probably some people know all of them or unfortunately, not.

Okay,

I try my best to meet more.

But

so yeah, and then I was put into a car

and

with a small motorcade, police cars, with sirens, and

which is funny because in the previous countries that I visited, I also was accompanied by motorcades because I was visiting the heads of states there.

And here in France, there was a certain consistency.

So I was greeted in the same way, so to say.

Were you like texting?

I couldn't because they took my phone and I wasn't.

But they immediately took your phone?

Yeah, I wasn't allowed to contact anyone except for my assistant, who I asked to find me some lawyers and reach out to certain friends that I have and try to understand what was going on.

And then I spent four days in police custody, the building in south of Paris that

is, I think, run by the police, customs, the customs police officers, or department, whatever.

And there I had to answer a lot of questions.

But you spent four days with no contact, no phone.

Yes.

In what kind of accommodations?

Was a

seven square meter room or 70 square feet room, no windows,

concrete block,

a bed this narrow,

no linen, no pillow, a mattress this thin, like yoga mat this thin, maybe one centimeter, half inch.

And that's it, and constantly

blinking light, which was a bit annoying.

Locked door?

There's, yeah, the door was very securely locked, I must say.

So you're in a cell?

Yes, it was a solitary cell, so to say.

There were no other people there.

So they put you in solitary confinement.

You could say that, yes.

Well, that sounds like that's what it is.

Well, it wasn't a prison or jail.

It wasn't.

Well, if there's a locked door, no pillow.

But legally speaking, it wasn't.

Yeah, legally speaking.

So

legally speaking,

why were you being held against your will by the French government?

Did you ever, in the first four days, did they make it clear to you?

So I understood that they were worried about the alleged

lack of response from Telegram towards the judicial requests coming from France, which turned out to be not true because we've never received a single legally binding legal request coming from France.

So I was even more confused.

And

I asked the French policeman, why haven't you been following the European law and serving your legal requests in the way prescribed by this law?

It's defined by the Digital Services Act and it's there.

You can Google the process,

you can read the privacy policy of Telegram.

It's easily accessible on the website.

So, why didn't you do it?

And they didn't answer, but thanks God they started to do it.

And then they started to receive responses helping them to identify criminal suspects, meaning we would disclose the IP address and phone number of

people

who were suspects in criminal investigations when we received court orders signed by a judge.

And this was something that we had in place since a year ago before that.

So it's not something that the French have forced us to do.

It's something that we already had in place.

We had a company in Belgium processing this request.

Other countries have successfully been using this process.

But somehow the French have ignored it completely.

And this is why I was very surprised.

I said, why haven't you been doing this?

This is the process.

And to be clear, I mean, I think this is standard for social media companies.

A company, whether it's Facebook or X or Snapchat or any of them, get a court order from a country in which they have users.

And the court order says, we have a reason to believe this person is a criminal.

Can we have the IP address?

I think they all comply with that, correct?

Yes.

Well, it's the DSA law.

If you don't comply with it, you can be fined, you can be banned.

Well, it's a question whether you want to continue providing your service in the European Union, but it's only concerns, it only concerns the identification data, meaning IP address, and in some cases, phone number of the suspect.

It has nothing to do with, for example,

private messages of a person or other kinds of activity, which is much more protected and much more private.

Even if we wanted to, we wouldn't be able to disclose this information.

But it's not required by the law.

Yes, but what you're describing is like the state of play across Europe anyway for all the companies.

Exactly.

So, but

because this is like a normal thing that's already taken its process that everyone recognizes and it's been ongoing, you must be very confused as to why you're being held in this jail that they're not calling a jail.

Were you confused?

Like, were you worried?

It was very hard to.

If I stepped off an airplane and a bunch of cops showed up, took my phone away and threw me in the back of a car and took me to a cell, even though they pretended it was not a jail, but wouldn't let me out and lock the door for four days without being able to contact my family.

I'd be concerned.

Were you concerned?

That was very surprising.

I was shocked.

You're very diplomatic.

You know, at first I thought there was some mistake.

They got their own guy.

I thought

they listed they read the list of charges.

I have nothing to do with these crimes, like organized crimes, selling drugs, all those things.

Like, what do I have to do with that?

Then I realized it's serious because they're not letting me out.

They

keep

me there

in this.

Okay, but just for perspective, so you've got a billion users.

It's a multi-billion dollar company.

You started the company, you own the company.

It's a huge company.

It's one of the biggest social media companies in the world.

And so there's a process.

So if they think that Telegram is doing something wrong, they send letters to your general counsel or maybe get your phone number, which I'm sure they can pretty easily get.

French intelligence, I'm sure, has everybody's phone number and just call you and tell you.

I've never heard of a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company getting arrested at the airport for

on grounds like this.

You're very right.

It never happened before.

It's like completely

outrageous.

It's unprecedented, right?

Never.

Unprecedented.

So it's something that I think was very unnecessary.

Because on top of what you just described, I'm also a French citizen.

So, in

how did you wind up, because you're not from France originally.

Yeah, I'm not from France originally, but I have certain ties to France and I was awarded, so to say, this citizenship for

using a specific process, which took several years, but I didn't cut any corners.

Like, I had to pass the French exam test.

Like, if I had to do certain things that you would normally do when you're because you wanted to be a French citizen.

I wanted.

I I love the country.

It's a great country.

It's a great culture.

Of course, these events are alarming.

And that's why I think it makes sense to speak about them.

And

the most interesting part of it is that every French citizen has his or her personal home address in the passport.

So the authorities of France know very well how to reach out to this person.

He's there or she's there.

and on top of that the consulate of france is located in the same building as the telegram office in dubai so the same building the same building like you remember i've been to the building you've been a huge building by the way no not really and it's just two floors below

so two floors from the french consulate we're two floors from the French consulate.

And I was a frequent visitor to the consulate.

And whenever

any French agency authority or representative of France or the government wanted to see me, they had no issue whatsoever arranging such meetings.

And these meetings took place.

I was happy just to go two floors below my office and have a conversation or invite them to our office.

So it's very, very strange what happened because it could have been resolved by different means.

If you think about it.

Well, obviously, they went way out of their way to humiliate you, to issue, they announced that they arrested you.

I mean, you were not obviously scanning Google for news stories about yourself because you didn't, you couldn't.

I couldn't.

But the rest of us were.

And they announced we've arrested Paul Durov and arms sales or drug sales or kidney porn or I mean, who knows, like horrible.

It's like, what?

So they were trying to terrify you and humiliate you, obviously.

This is something that was also very unusual.

So what my lawyers told me here in France, that normally the prosecutor's office is not that public.

They are not issuing press statements every day and they're not commenting on their investigations, which was not the case with me, where they were very active.

They were trying to read.

Have you gone back?

So you were, of course, you were locked up and you couldn't read the coverage, but have you gone back and read it for those four days when you were being held?

Well, when I was in police custody, I heard from one of the policemen.

He told me

every newspaper in the world is covering this

and is mentioning you.

And I said, What's going on?

He said, Well, a lot of people are supportive.

But I asked him, What do newspapers write about this case?

And he told me, Everything but truth.

And I freaked out at that moment, like, everything but truth, seriously.

And

when I went,

this four days ended.

And I was...

Can I just ask, like, what was your family doing?

And you've got children and parents.

And, like, what were...

Well, to be honest, this is the hardest part because I'm pretty stress-resilient.

So I can take care of myself.

But being there, locked there, thinking about...

What's going on with my mom?

You know, she's very ill.

She's very elderly.

She was very worried, as I learned after what's going on with my kids.

And this is something that gets to you.

And you couldn't contact them.

No, there's no way because you don't have access to any device.

You can't even read anything.

What did they think was going on?

They were very surprised and very confused and very worried.

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Just for perspective, those who don't know your story won't tell the whole story.

It's an amazing story.

We did an interview with you maybe a year and a half ago in which you told your story you're russian as people can probably hear in your voice and

sound like you're pretty happy in russia successful in russia you had to leave russia for political reasons the government was trying to use your company for its own purposes you didn't want to be used you let you left your own country um and moved uh well moved around and but wound up in dubai in france

were you ever arrested by putin

no no okay

uh just to put a finer point on this, I mean, I'm not defending Putin, but you were arrested by the French government in the Free West.

Did you ever kind of see the irony there?

That was the most unexpected place to get arrested for me, because before in this trip, I visited several countries.

Some of these countries are considered in the West to be autocratic or authoritarian.

But I had,

and Telgram is very, very popular in these countries I visited before coming to Paris.

And I had zero issues whatsoever, despite the fact that Telgram

does zero

censorship in terms of political speech.

And Telgram provides 100%

privacy and confidentiality to its users in all these places.

So you do not extract personal information from your users.

Unlike our company, yes.

We never do that.

Okay.

But other companies, I mean, Facebook is,

I mean, Meta is very rich because they extract that personal data, right?

That's a business model.

Yes.

That's right, but I'm not attacking them.

Sorry, I am attacking them.

But that's what they do.

And you don't do that.

Yes.

Right.

We don't have to do that.

We

came up with ways to monetize Telegram without having to

abuse people's personal data this way.

So Telegram became profitable last year and very profitable, more than half a billion dollars in profit

without having to rely on methods like this when you have to extract personal data and then use it for targeting ads, for example.

We have very successful subscription, paid subscription

servers on Telegram.

We have, you know, we monetize in ways that are consistent with our values.

That are voluntary.

Yeah.

I mean, your users have to sign up for the things

that make you money.

You're not just stealing their data from them.

Exactly.

And the service is free, and we just crossed 1 billion monthly user

threshold or milestone.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

So it's growing very fast.

And we are very happy with what we are.

We are very proud with what we do.

Because if you look at any mobile messaging app right now, and we're number two after you can guess which other app, we're the second most popular messaging app in the world.

But most of the features that you use

on a modern messaging app first appeared, first were created by Telegram, and then they were borrowed.

We came up with a list of like 100 such features.

And those are not like small things.

Those are basic things that you

know in every modern messaging app, like the way

you

respond to messages, the way you share links, the way you share documents, the text formatting, many, many, many, many things, like dozens of those first appeared on Telegram.

And then three to eight years after, they've been copied by our rivals, one of which is larger than Telegram and others are smaller.

But still, we are proud.

But we are proud that

we've been able to shape what the industry is like today and define how billions of people communicate.

But it's just, I'm just going back to this story, which is, by the way, I love your Slavic deadpan approach to this.

It's like, it's crazy.

I mean, if Mark Zuckerberg or Elon got grabbed, you know, at the private part of de Gaulle airport, you'd be like, stop them, like, what?

The world is ending.

But they grabbed you and people were like, oh, he's got a Russian last name.

It's fine.

I'm sure.

It's a good reason.

Wow.

I hope it had nothing to do with my ethnicity because that's.

Of course it did.

Are you joking?

That would be very alarming.

Because you got run out of Russia, by the way.

I just want to say that again.

You'd probably still be living there if you hadn't had to leave.

So it's clear you didn't participate in whatever they're mad about in Russia.

You're gone.

Yeah, but it still can make you an easier target.

I'm aware of that.

Because people don't know my story, right?

People, not everybody watched our last interview and not everybody had a where was the out so I was well I know you and obviously I like you so and I like what you're doing I like your commitment to privacy and to the user and I think the users

privacy should play a role in your in your thinking about a business and that's my view and you agree most companies don't agree so I'm on your side but where were all the civil libertarians jumping to your defense like how can you just grab someone at the airport because

well because who knows why can you just do that put put him in jail for four days take his phone like where were your defenders

well

to be fair some people did uh yeah some did pick up and and and and defended me and i actually there were more than 10 million or more than i think a very big number of people who signed a petition to free me yes so it was

a very very large movement uh i was even thinking more like the united nations you know human rights watchdogs.

Like, where are they?

If this happened in North Korea,

which, you know, I don't know, it hasn't.

So, but if it happened there, we'd be like, oh my gosh, it's Stalinism, but it happens in France.

And you're like, I'm sure there's a good reason.

That's, you know, that's what makes the situation so complicated because

we have to look at the instances such as this one, regardless of

which jurisdiction uh

i was born in which jurisdiction is uh conducting this investigation it should be completely uh un uh unbiased right so it's

it's it's very concerning and they ask you questions about russia during your four days of entertainment i think so but it wasn't the focus of the questioning

the the the the the most questions were about the

way Telegram operates, as if it's some kind of mystery.

We're a big company.

We are audited by a big four

auditing firm.

We work with the biggest financial institutions.

So we're a big company.

We spend millions of dollars every quarter.

on legal compliance.

So we pay to law firms to receive the best advice in order to make sure we don't violate laws anywhere.

And we operate in almost 200 countries.

So it was very, very surprising for me to get detained in Paris and learn that Telegram did something wrong or didn't process some requests.

And then when I learned more about it, I realized that we did actually nothing wrong because the law is very clear.

in describing the process that should be followed in order for this request to be processed.

And it wasn't followed.

And that's something that French prosecutors could have found out in about six minutes, obviously.

That's the irony of it.

You could Google Telegram police contact, Telegram EU corporation, whatever, and it would be instantly visible online for anybody who has access to Google.

For some reason, it wasn't used by the...

Right.

And you have to think that there's like a reason.

Before I ask about that, how was the food in French prison, by the way?

there was they I think they made some exception in relation to food for me so it was fine I was fine it was pretty good I you know I don't eat meat I don't eat fast food so I was good with

enough fish and I could do my 200 push-ups in the morning like 200 squats and then I repeated it because I didn't have access to a gym but so I kept my routine there did you join a gang no I was alone there.

You were alone.

That's just the whole thing's incredible.

So where does it stand now?

I should say we're in France right now.

You're still in France.

I'm still in France.

Many, many months later.

Almost eight months.

Eight months later, you're still in France.

Why are you still here?

So there is this

limitation on my

traveling ability, so to say, which is called judicial control.

Judicial control is when you can't leave the country freely because there is still investigation going on, and you're one of the suspects or the suspect.

I was still

being allowed to go to Dubai, and I returned last week from Dubai, and I will be going to Dubai later this week, but it's a very, very restricted, controlled

process still.

And what's the idea there?

Since you own a multi-billion dollar company with a billion users, that's really famous.

Like where would you go on planet Earth if you were going to run away?

Well, that's exactly

the source of my misunderstanding and my confusion here.

So

I'm not running anywhere.

And I've been to Dubai, came back.

So it's very hard for me to understand my role in being here because I'm required to answer some questions in relation to Telegram every like fifth month or fourth month.

So the other like three or four months, I am just

having to be here for reasons that are very hard for me to understand.

What's their argument?

I mean, I'm just confused.

See, no one's actually, despite the headlines that flooded the world in August when you were arrested, detained, whatever they're calling it, put in a cell.

You were not involved in kiddie porn, drug sales, organized crime, armed sales.

I can't even even remember, but like the worst crimes in the world.

No one is actually claiming you were involved in those crimes, correct?

Correct.

Okay.

They're saying that you had, of your billion users, there were a few who may have been doing bad things, and you're saying, I tried, but I didn't know that.

It's not my fault, right?

Correct.

It'd be like saying to Donald Trump, there are 350 million people in America.

you know, one-third the number of users you have, and some of them are using kiddie porn or selling drugs or, you know, organized driving.

We're putting you in jail for it.

I mean, that's like, it's insane.

So, why are you still here?

Like, what is the claim against you?

I'm still trying to find out, to be honest.

I'm still confused.

So, at first, they said, oh, you failed to respond to our legal requests, and that's why you're complicit.

But first of all,

it's not true that we didn't respond to legally binding legal requests.

And secondly,

it's it's a very

extensive interpretation of complicity, even for the French

legal and judicial system.

What I hear from my lawyers is that it's quite unprecedented.

They had a couple of really small niche apps that are like 10,000 smaller than Telegram and were targeted specifically at criminals.

They were nothing like Telegram.

They didn't even have these companies that they didn't even have bank accounts.

It was a different profile.

They were not audited by a big four

organization.

But

these companies have been persecuted in France before

and their

founders, I understand,

were accused of running a platform that is created for the purpose to facilitate crime.

It's pretty much obvious that Telgram is not such a company, right?

So it has a billion users.

Every eighth person on the planet is a user of Telegram,

a regular one.

And

it's incomprehensible to assume that all these

people are criminals.

And you know, everybody knows the story of Telegram very well.

It's not something that was built for criminals.

However,

this reasoning, as far as I understand, is being

used also in our case.

They say that, all right, so you

created this app and this app was used by other people.

They were criminals and you didn't do enough to prevent them from doing what they were doing.

which again is

contrary to what we see on other platforms.

Like you have instances where problematic content exists despite despite the best efforts of

social media platforms, moderation teams, and so on and so forth.

It's almost impossible to avoid that.

But the claim itself just conceptually doesn't make sense.

I mean, if someone commits armed robbery in Burgundy or Toulouse or Nice, can President Macron be arrested for that?

Because it's his country.

He runs the country.

And he didn't do enough to stop the armed robbery in Toulouse.

Like, how can that stand?

Why isn't he in jail?

Like,

nuts.

Well, the logic also eludes me, so to say.

Back with the Russian understatement.

No, I, it's.

So, look, here's the inescapable conclusion, I think, as from a bystander's perspective, that they do this in public rather than just calling you.

So we have a problem, we can work it out, or call your lawyers.

They arrest you in public.

They slander you.

They try and tie you to the worst crimes

man commits.

And then they put you in jail.

And so they're trying to sweat you, to intimidate you,

to wear you down in order to get into the back door of Telegram so they can spy on people,

probably really for political reasons.

That's what they're really worried about is a revolt in their own country.

Every government's really worried mostly about its own population revolting against this bad governance.

Like that's their real fear.

And they hate Telegram because it offers users privacy and that's a threat to them.

And so they force you as the owner of the company to give them the keys.

That's what it looks like.

Well, to be clear, nobody approached me with the demand to give the so-called keys.

Such keys don't exist technically, but if somebody approaches me and says, we need the keys, you'll be among the first to learn about it.

But that hasn't happened.

Well, actually, the U.S.

government pushed you.

I remember the FBI was trying to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because this is something governments want, not just of you, but of all social media companies.

You know what's interesting?

In the U.S., you have a process

that allows the government to actually force any engineer in any tech company to implement a backdoor and not tell anyone about it with using this process called the gag order.

And

there are certain legal procedures.

Not tell his own employer about it?

And yes, exactly.

If you tell your own boss, you can end up in jail, like gag order.

Actually,

this is something that's on Wikipedia.

In France, France.

In the Soviet Union or in the U.S.?

In the U.S.

Okay.

I'm not criticizing.

So your employees have a legal obligation to act as fifth column spies, saboteurs against you, your employees.

Well, that's one of the reasons we didn't discuss last time why I didn't move to the U.S.

with my team.

And you got mugged in San Francisco on your one trip there.

Exactly.

But I did this extensive legal analysis.

Like, I asked my lawyers, the U.S.

lawyers, what is this thing called the gag order?

And they explained it to me and how it works and how it could potentially be applied.

So we decided maybe not the best place for a privacy-oriented platform.

But here in France, we really don't know because there are a lot of conspiracy theories about it.

And at first, I thought I also started to be concerned, like, what is this about?

But then, when the French police and the French judges started to send their requests in accordance to the European law to Telegram

and receive the identification data, I mean the IP address of criminal suspects, they seemed to become very happy.

They expressed their joy in the press.

They said, oh, Telegram is now cooperating all of a sudden, as if it was something new.

Can I ask you to pause?

When they said that, I remember that very well.

Yeah.

That sounded to me like they were trying to discredit you and were sending the message because they were not specific.

They just said they're cooperating.

And that made it sound to the rest of the world like, oh, they broke Pavel.

They hung him by his ankles and burned him with Galois until he finally gave up and turned over the back end to them.

And now they're spying on all Telegram users.

You're cooperating like you would in East Germany in 1975.

That's what it sounded like.

Yeah, that's why it's so important to clarify this, because this perception is not only bad for Telegram, it's even worse for the image of France.

Because if you think about it, France is still a land where laws and legal procedures should be adhered to.

And even in this case, if you want additional access

to certain data, personal data, it has to be done in accordance with laws.

And then every company, for example, us, we never disclose private messaging data to any third party, including governments.

And if it's in some country, they would say you have to do it, we would discontinue providing services in that country, then doing it.

Isn't that why you left Russia in the first place?

Yes.

So you've been through this.

You left your own country because you refused to give up the privacy of the user.

Yeah.

But here it's catching up because last month the Senate here in France passed a law basically banning encryption.

This law was

forcing all messaging app providers to implement the backdoor for the French law enforcement to fight crime.

The problem here was...

Fight crime.

Well, exactly, because the problem here was there is no such thing as an exclusive backdoor.

If you implement the backdoor, technically

other

actors are able to exploit it.

And it could be foreign agents, it could be hackers, it could be anyone.

So that law would have put millions of people or tens of millions of French citizens in danger.

Their private messages would have been exposed.

The criminals, however, would have instantly switched to niche

smaller apps, not mainstream apps.

And if the government was tried to would try to ban these apps, they would switch to VPNs.

They would even become more efficient in hiding their traces.

So the criminals would experience zero problems

if that law is passed.

It's the law-abiding citizens who would be affected.

And that's why it's so problematic.

And nobody was talking about it.

I asked my French friends, like, have you heard about this law?

Like, no.

They were completely unaware.

And luckily, the National Assembly here in France shot that bill down.

So it didn't pass this time.

But if you look at the new project by the EU, by the European Commission,

published in early April, they again want to do exactly that, to backdoor encryption, but now on the EU level.

And that raises many serious questions because no country in the world banned encryption so far.

Even the places that you would consider authoritarian places.

For reasons that I just described,

it's just a huge threat for the entire population to

all users to legally force companies to implement backdoors.

So I think it's very important that people talk about these things.

First of all, that France is not

a country where freedoms are disrespected.

For example, if people assume that France can now take CEOs of

tech companies

hostage in such a way that you describe, and then extract certain personal data from them using illegal and unlawful processes, that would be a big, big blow for the image of France.

But I don't think we're there because we haven't.

You might chip away at this concept of the rules-based order.

The rules-based order, which everyone in NATO is always lecturing everybody else about.

The rules-based order, there's nothing rules-based about what they did to you.

I'm sorry.

I mean, that's just, that's might makes right.

That's we have guns and you don't.

It's our airport, not yours.

You're going to jail.

I just don't see the legal justification for doing this to anybody.

It was excessive, in my view.

But it was also a sign that,

again, in my view, this investigation was not based on thorough analysis of what Telegram represents and

what the goals of the company are.

And again, they have been no attempt and they had

didn't even try to solve this in a more traditional, conventional way before starting.

A legal way, actually.

A legal and diplomatic way.

What did they do with your phone?

Well, they just kept my phone.

I hope they scrutinize it because there they have a lot of proof that actually Telegram is a completely legitimate and compliant organization.

And we have spent

huge funds on content moderation and legal compliance all over the world since like 10 years ago.

So they are welcome to have my phone.

Exchoser bonds.

Yeah, so Telegram issued bonds a few years ago.

We were

happy to have

the assistance of JP Morgan, the world's biggest bank.

World's biggest bank.

So I only asked, I knew that, and I just want you to say it because just to underscore the point, it says you're not like some

Belarusian college student doing this out of your room or something.

This is like a worldwide huge company.

It's just absolutely crazy.

And it doesn't have as deep penetration in the United States as it does in the rest of the world.

So I just want people to know this is not some sketchy deal.

This is like, I just can't believe they did that.

Where are you now in the process?

So the process is

not going too fast, but this is the tradition here in France.

So I'm not...

I'm just visiting for a couple of days.

You think I'll get out of here?

So

I haven't been granted a fast track

in my case.

And

I've just seen my investigative judges.

They have this

role of investigative judges here in France.

So my current status is I'm not on trial.

It's an investigation intended to find out whether there'll be enough evidence to put this on trial.

So I'm not even on trial yet.

But you're basically imprisoned in France.

But I, well, I'm not imprisoned.

But

can you leave whenever you want?

I can't leave France freely, that's true.

So, how is that not imprisoned?

Well, I mean,

they're great restaurants.

I'm not, you know what I mean?

It's not a commissary with guys with face tattoos, but if you can't leave, then aren't you by definition imprisoned?

You could say so.

I just don't want to create this image of a real prison in the minds of our viewers.

So, this is, I don't know if anyone can see the cell we're in.

It's very nice, room service and everything.

I mean, no, it's France.

It's like very first world in some ways, but not in its attitudes, I'm learning.

So how long will that continue?

And you've got children, you know, and a life and a business and friends and family.

And they're not in France, so far as I know.

So.

Yes, they're all in Dubai.

And I have kids in Dubai that I am unable to

not just see, I'm unable to legally take care of them by signing certain documents I have to sign.

And I've, you know,

it's been

very stressful also

for my mom,

who is gravely illegal, and I can't see her.

I also have this company to run.

We have a billion users.

It's important.

And I'm doing it remotely now, but it's not as efficient.

So if you think about it, France is less than 1%

of the Telegram user base.

It's something like half of 1%.

And the other 99.5% are coming from elsewhere, right?

India, Indonesia, you name it.

And

it's kind of counterintuitive for me that

the entire organization is impacted because we have this ongoing investigation here in France, particularly given the fact that it's going in a pace that only requires me to be here once like in

several months.

So I do think that the current restriction is

very strange and very unnecessary.

And I hope it will be lifted later this year.

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Some people think nature is like this, but actually, it's like this.

That's why Columbia engineers everything we make for anything nature can throw at you.

Columbia, engineered for whatever.

Well, it's C, because, first of all, this investigation can't last forever.

It could probably last for another several months or a year, and then it will have to either go

on trial or

be concluded.

You could be criminally charged for this?

Everything is possible.

Like you can't rule out.

Yes, if they'd arrest you at the airport, they'd do anything, right?

That's what

bothered me when I was in police custody for these four days.

Like first thing, something like this should have never happened because I assumed there were certain thorough procedures to verify a lot of

alleged facts before taking a decision such as this.

Like you can't start something like this based on a media article that Telegram

allegedly is non-cooperative or that Telegram supposedly has worse content moderation than other platforms.

Both these facts turned out to be completely false.

You have to be really thorough.

and examine things before making this decision because this decision such as this are not only harmful for my relatives or for my company or for me personally.

Decisions such as this, I think, impact France as a whole.

And I'm French, I'm a French citizen, so I worry about that as well.

I really think that out of all social media platforms, Telugu was probably the most friendly

potential partner for France.

And every time...

anyone from the French government, from the French authorities reached out to me, I did my best to help.

I helped.

So this, for me, looked almost like friendly fire.

Like

they're trying to attack their own ally in a way.

And I was so surprised that this would happen

because the collateral damage, not just for me and my company, but for the image of France, is quite significant.

And I talked to many of my friends, the CEO of big tech companies, and they were very concerned and asked me, can I still come to France?

Is it still safe to be in France?

People were worried.

And the CEOs of smaller companies,

they don't have a billion users, are even more worried.

They say, look, they did this to you and you're very well known and the company of your profile

should be.

treated in

certain different way.

So, and I am running a small startup, a friend of mine would say, I'm scared to come.

And this trend continues.

So I heard.

But just the sad thing is like nobody's afraid to go to Uzbekistan, actually.

I'm not endorsing Uzbekistan.

I've never been there, but I've never met anyone who's like, I'm too afraid to go to Uzbekistan.

Yeah, I was there last summer.

It was great.

I didn't even know that.

But that's the point.

I mean,

right?

These countries that you grew up thinking are primitive or don't have functioning legal systems or, you know, whose laws are really just a function of the whim of the monarch or whatever, they turn out to be kind of fine with

what you do or what I do or what any normal person who believes in human rights does, but it's like France or Great Britain.

Like, didn't you get citizenship here thinking this was a safe haven as someone who was in some sense kind of a refugee from his own country?

A refugee of principle.

Like, I don't want to share this with the government.

I'm leaving.

Didn't you choose this country for citizenship because you thought that it was a place that was committed to human rights?

Well, the slogan of France is

liberty, fraternity, egality, right?

So equality.

So

it's something that I strongly believe in.

And it's certainly something that

France stands for,

in my opinion.

And for pretty much everybody who was born in the Soviet Union, like I was,

Western Europe

is considered to be this place where freedoms and human rights are respected.

And

that's why it was such a shock

for me back there in the police custody.

Interestingly, the interpreter that we had during these four days in police custody also emigrated from the Soviet Union.

She was translating English to French and back.

And after being present there for two days,

she

said during a break with all the policemen and

clerks and everybody present there.

And she said, I left the Soviet Union

hoping I would be in a country with freedoms.

And it seems now that the Soviet Union has caught up with me.

And I've what, so I was very surprised to hear her say that, because for me, France is not there yet.

France is still the country that respects human rights and freedoms.

However, I understood, I later understood why she was so sensitive to this, because she actually experienced what life is like in an environment where you don't have freedom of speech.

and you don't have a free market economy.

And that's why every perceived change for

uh in this direction where freedoms are less respected uh is is taking very is making them very very concerned people from the soviet union and i myself i remember my life i was a small kid in the soviet union but i remember uh having only three tv channels and all these three tv channels show the same TV program with the about the Communist Party.

I remember having two kinds of ice cream in the shops across the city and across the country and no more.

And then when I was brought to Italy as a five-year-old kid and I could see, okay, actually, I could have 100 TV channels and some of them even show Disney cartoons and Japanese anime.

That's great.

I can go to a shop downstairs and they have 200 different kinds of ice cream.

That's much better that I experienced in the the Soviet Union.

And I thought maybe these things,

afterwards I realized that these systems called the free market economy and respect to freedom of speech and basic human rights, they're actually very good concepts because they make your life abundant.

But the problem is I remember this

life in the absence of these things.

Other people from the Soviet Union, probably from Cuba, from other countries like that, experienced that.

But people who were born and grew up here, for example, in France, have not necessarily had this experience.

They take freedoms for granted.

They think that things are going to be fine because we're a free country and what can possibly go wrong.

Unfortunately, the history knows many examples when free societies gradually degraded into societies without freedoms.

And one good example was last month with this anti-encryption law I told you before about, because people were completely ignorant here in France.

The public was completely ignorant.

So no encryption means no privacy.

Yes.

Correct.

It means everybody's vulnerable.

Like everybody's messages can leak,

it's mind-boggling.

And of course, every time something like this is proposed,

very

logically sounding justifications.

are used.

It's to protect the children.

To protect the children, to fight crime, to

neither of which they bother doing, by the way.

They don't care about children.

They don't stop crime.

Or in the Soviet Union, they would say, like in Mao, is China and other places, they would say, oh, our geopolitical rival is trying to stir chaos in our country, so we have to limit this.

It's Qatar doing it.

It's Russia.

It's Qatar.

So, yeah, I don't know.

But it's always some Trotskyite wreckers.

It's some unseen force from a foreign land trying to wreck our project.

So we need to oppress you to keep you safe.

Yes.

But it's not easy because now in the European Union you have all these laws that basically say you have to remove anything.

It's actually part of the Digital Services Act.

You have to remove anything one of the European countries demands you remove for the entire of the entirety of the European Union.

So if you have, for example, Romania or Estonia or any other of these

very highly respected countries demanding that you remove most of Telegram channels for whatever reason, you have to remove them, then you can appeal.

Well, it will take you probably several years,

but you have to remove them within like a very short time frame.

Otherwise, you'll be facing

fines, bans, and so on.

How is that not the Warsaw Pact?

I mean, how is that not Soviet?

If you criticize the people in charge, we shut you down.

That's what they're saying.

Interesting, you would say that.

It was in 2009, 2008, actually.

I made my first trip to Latvia on a train from St.

Petersburg.

And

something was wrong with my visa, so I had to...

uh get off and the border town in Latvia.

But I had this long discussion with a border police officer.

Well, I seem to like border policemen.

So, border police officer in Latvia, and I started to discuss his life in Latvia after Latvia was accepted in the EU.

And he told me this interesting thing.

He said, you know, we hated being in the Soviet Union,

but now that we are in the EU, we realize we are in a very similar organization.

Of course.

We're in the Soviet Union again.

Unelected foreigners are still making the key decisions and you don't get to talk.

So it's very funny you would compare this to systems.

Of course they're very different, but still.

But fundamentally, if you're not allowed to criticize the people in charge, you live in a tyranny.

I mean, what's the other definition of it?

I have to be able to say to the person making the decisions, I don't like that decision, and here's why I have to be able to say it in public.

And I've always felt that the problem that you have, as the person who owns and runs Telegram, is that you make it easy for people to come together online.

You have the channels.

And that is, I don't know if you thought this through and you're an engineer when you built it,

but that is potentially a massive threat to governments because it's not simply communicating one-on-one.

People can create their own channels, just like a TV channel, and reach a lot of like-minded people, and they could potentially organize.

Organize.

That's true.

But one thing that makes Telegram different, we don't promote these channels.

So everything that you have on Telegram is something that you have to deliberately search for and subscribe for.

Yes.

So unlike some other apps that constantly recommend you content and content sources, we don't do that.

You open Telegram.

It's just an empty list of chats if you don't have any friend there and if you're not subscribed to any channel.

You have to deliberately find one.

So I think we're a completely neutral platform.

We allow everybody to express their voice within the

rules of the common sense.

And then everybody can decide which point of view makes more sense to them and

see if, for example, the government is right or the opposition is right.

Right.

Well, that's called freedom.

That's called freedom.

Unfortunately, it's something that, surprisingly,

faces a lot of backlash.

May I ask you a question about encryption?

So

the advances in computing power, well, they're calling it quantum computing, right?

So they're just so exponential that it's hard even to understand for the non-engineer brain like mine, but they're profound.

The speed at which processing is now occurring, does that eliminate, like what is the technology, what is the technological state of play?

Does that eliminate encryption?

Encryption will have to change, correct?

The encryption has to change and

there has been made progress in

encryption which is like quantum secure.

So it's a constant

evolution.

So

the tools to decrypt become stronger and then the tools to encrypt become stronger.

That makes sense.

Are you confident that encryption that secure encryption will still exist as a technological matter with the rise of the super fast quantum computing?

It's very hard to be confident in anything because,

first of all, we have to rely on the computing power of our devices to decrypt things.

Of course, there are very sophisticated algorithms in place that

make it so that you don't have to have the same level of computing power on your device

as in a data center.

You have to bring bring a data center with you.

Yeah, exactly.

So

it's not exactly like build a nuclear power plant, buy 100 acres.

You don't have to.

But,

you know, it continues.

So

particularly the state actors have almost infinite computing power at their disposal, and they have certain technologies at their disposal that they may not be

telling everybody about.

They might not be telling people about it?

So it's very possible that what you're saying will become reality or is already reality.

Who knows?

So

that kind of is one of the, and I don't, you know, I know you have,

well, you're legally bound here in France, so you're under some kind of

state control.

So, and I know your life is complicated because it's, I don't want to push you to say things that get you in trouble, but

it does feel like a determined government can spy in anybody who wants to.

That's the way it feels to me.

Do you think that's true?

Well, I think the biggest risk for personal privacy is

the ability of any state actor to penetrate the device of the person, the mobile device, for example, because there are so-called zero-day vulnerabilities on iOS or Android phones, for example, that the governments sometimes know about and the secret agencies know about and they can exploit them, but everybody else doesn't know and they can't defend

themselves from them.

So if you became a target of a government, it's really likely that they would install this Trojan, so-called Trojan called Pegasus on your device.

And I was one of these people eight years ago that had Pegasus installed on their phones, according to the leaked reports.

Been there.

Is there any way, and I think a lot of people are there without knowing it, and I know that.

Is there any way to know if your phone has

been compromised, if what you're looking at and typing is being read by somebody else?

Is there any way to know for certain?

For certain, probably no, but there are ways to check that and see if known vulnerabilities have been

exploited on your phone.

And I know there are some organizations that could help you with that.

Where's your phone?

Did you leave it out?

I don't use a phone.

I haven't used the phone

for a year almost.

I find...

Oh, France took it.

Oh, France took it, but even before it took it, I wasn't using my phone.

I didn't have a SIM card in the phone.

I just use it to test Telegram, the app, because we have constant product updates.

I have to test it at least twice a week.

But

I'm not a user of a phone.

So I just want to say, again, you're an engineer, too.

I mean, you're not like a marketing guy.

You're like a build-the-app guy.

So you understand the technology

because you built it.

Yes.

So you're coming from a highly informed perspective when you make technology choices.

Is that fair?

You could say so.

Yeah.

One of the most informed probably in the world.

And you don't have a phone.

What is that?

Like, why don't you have a phone?

Well, I don't use phone regularly, right?

I probably own a phone, but I don't use phone.

I don't carry a phone with me because I find it extremely distracting.

I find it also

potentially

harming my privacy.

And

I also just don't think it's a necessary device for me to have.

When I want to focus on something, I would rather use my laptop or my iPad

and put together some notes

or some

interact with my team, right?

So I wouldn't want to just open my phone and disappear there consuming short-form content.

And that's why I don't use a phone.

I'm

trying to extract this from you for one simple reason, which is I think that when you come across someone who knows an immense amount about technology, really understands the technology, it's interesting to know his perspective on technology.

Like with everything you know, you don't use a phone.

So I just think people can draw their own conclusions from that.

So

what do you saw Ross Albrecht?

Albrecht got

the guy who was pardoned, yes.

Yeah, Silk Road.

So he ran Silk Road, and I'm hardly an expert on this.

I was very pleased when he got pardoned.

But it seemed like no one accused him of selling drugs, by the way.

You know, you would never know that from me in the New York Times, but he was not dealing drugs on playgrounds or anything like that.

He had a site

that made commerce possible outside the control of government.

And there apparently were bad people doing bad things on it.

Or also a lot of good people doing good things on it, but none of it was controlled by the government.

And he got life in prison for that.

That's my takeaway.

And so maybe there will all my

sort of conclusion from this is as long as people like you create technology that makes it harder for government to control people, you will be a target of government action.

You think that's

it.

Well, first of all, I wouldn't necessarily compare Telegram with Silk Road.

And I'm not.

But

the idea that they need to control everything that is happening online, and if they can't, they're going to punish you, that does seem like a real fact.

I think everybody's trying to

reach their goals and be more efficient in what they do.

For example, you ask any Minister of Interior, any head of police, and they'll tell you, oh, encryption is a big problem.

If it weren't for encryption, we would solve all crime.

They don't see it two steps or three steps ahead.

And it's not necessarily like some huge conspiracy where evil governments want to take more and more control, although that may be the case.

I'm not knowledgeable on that subject.

It seems to me more like everybody is trying to solve the problems that they see using the tools that they have at their disposal even if it negatively impacts other areas you know of our lives you're a very generous man i must say last question and thank you for doing this um how long are you going to be in france and once you leave france will you be coming back to france

i don't know yet uh when these restrictions will be lifted i hope uh later this year i will be able to to travel to my home country, which is Dubai, freely.

I will probably come back to France because it's a great place

to

spend time in.

Of course,

I have spent a lot of time in France now,

eight months.

Kind of a full immersion program.

How's your French?

It's actually good.

I was very good when I passed my French exam to receive the passport.

It got 97 points out of 100.

But I didn't practice my French much.

Most of my friends are Americans,

but even here in Paris.

And my French friends speak perfect English.

So I didn't get a chance to practice.

But now you've had that chance?

No, because they speak English with me.

It changed.

Before 15 years ago, 20 years ago,

it was difficult not to speak French in France.

Now, for better or worse, you can get by using English.

I'm trying to use my French, but I don't sound as int I sound even less intelligent in in French than in English.

So people switch back to English with me.

But you don't anticipate like having to stay for the next 20 years or anything here?

I would be very surprised if that happened because you see I'm traveling to Dubai, I'm coming back, it's just obvious that I'm not

somebody who would try to escape forever.

And

this investigation has to be concluded

one way or the other.

Of course, then if it goes to trial, if that happens, it can take another several years.

But then again, it would be completely

crazy, I would say, if I would have to move to France and live here permanently for the whole duration of this process.

I would say that

most likely

I expect that I would be able to travel again later this year.

Well, we're certainly rooting for you.

Pablo, thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

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