DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Over the course of more than a decade, the founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram has collected several nationalities, something that only adds to the mystery surrounding his detention in France.
Those passports offered Pavel Durov protection after he founded 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. Western governments, however, allege that Telegram has aided the work of drug traffickers, money launderers, militant groups and child pornographers.
“To be truly free, you must be willing to risk everything for freedom,” Durov once wrote on Instagram, interspersed with photos of himself shirtless against the backdrop of Dubai’s skyscrapers or the ruins of Mada’in Saleh in Saudi Arabia.
That risk now appears to have caught up with him, despite holding passports from Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates and Saint Kitts and Nevis, and a fortune estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion.
Durov was released from French custody on Wednesday after being arrested at Paris-Le Bourget airport on Saturday. Allegations include his platform being used for child abuse material and drug trafficking, fraud and complicity in organized crime transactions, and that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required to do so by law. He is expected to appear in court later on Wednesday.
Durov, 39, apparently began applying for other citizenships more than a decade ago, a move he said stemmed from a dispute over control of VKontakte, “In Contact,” better known as VK, a social media website that at the time surpassed Facebook in Russia.
Russian security services had moved to block pages linked to a Ukrainian protest movement that helped oust the country’s Kremlin-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych. Durov posted online what appeared to be documents from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, demanding personal information from groups linked to the protests.
After stepping down on April 1, initially as a joke, Durov left the UK for good. He reportedly obtained a residence visa for Dubai, the business hub of the United Arab Emirates. He also obtained a passport from Saint Kitts and Nevis, reportedly by contributing $250,000 to the Caribbean country’s sugar industry.
Saint Kitts and Nevis remains a popular tax haven for the wealthy and for those with passports that require onerous visas to travel to other countries.
Durov said in a 2017 VK post that he had been issued a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport in the spring of 2013, calling it “a convenient thing as it allows visa-free travel to the EU and Britain.”
He added that he had never been to the Caribbean island country – and had no plans to travel there – and that “one can get a passport without leaving Europe.”
In 2017, Durov was living full-time in Dubai and working for his Telegram office from Dubai Media City.
“I love it here,” he told Bloomberg at the time. “It’s developing so fast, like a startup.” The news organization estimated his net worth at the time at $300 million and 2,000 bitcoins — a cryptocurrency whose value has since skyrocketed.
Sometime during this period, the United Arab Emirates granted Durov citizenship, a rarity in a country where 90% of the population are foreigners with no opportunity to obtain citizenship.
The UAE has not explained why it granted Durov citizenship, although state news agency WAM publicly recognized his citizenship on Tuesday and asked France to provide him “all necessary consular services in an urgent case.” Under Emirati law, investors, doctors, specialists and intellectuals can be put on a path to citizenship if they are approved by one of the country’s seven rulers, a crown prince or the federal government in his autocratic nation.
Durov was photographed in 2021 meeting with Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, the Crown Prince of Dubai. A WAM report at the time described Telegram as “headquartered globally in Dubai” and worth more than $20 billion.
The UAE, and Dubai in particular, has been trying to lure internet and e-commerce companies for years. Durov also joined an advisory board to the ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala invested $75 million in Telegram that same year, as did another Abu Dhabi company.
His French nationality remains unclear.
Durov officially became a French citizen in 2021, and his name was published in the naturalization section of the French Official Gazette on August 25 of that year. In May 2022, he officially changed the transliteration of his name in French to Paul du Rove, according to a government decree.
Details of Durov’s French naturalization process, a lengthy and cumbersome bureaucratic process for most, are kept secret from the public due to French privacy rules.
Durov did not appear to meet the standard requirements of being a legal resident of the country for two to five years or having French relatives, but he may have been eligible for a rare citizenship route for specially “merited foreigners.” According to the French government, this applies to French-speaking foreigners who “contribute, through their merited action, to France’s global influence and the prosperity of its international economic relations.”
According to an official familiar with the meeting, Durov met French President Emmanuel Macron in 2018. During that meeting, they had a conversation, as the French president regularly does with leaders of international companies, about developing their operations in France.
Durov later applied for French citizenship through a request to the French Foreign Ministry, and not directly through Macron, the official said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly under his name about private presidential meetings.
France and the UAE have close military ties, with French troops operating a naval base in Abu Dhabi and Emirati forces using Leclerc tanks and Rafale fighter jets. Macron is also said to have close ties to Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi. The arrest sparked a fake video online Tuesday night, falsely attributed to satellite news network Al Jazeera, claiming an arms deal between the countries was in jeopardy.
But as with so much of Durov, details remain unclear. He had sometimes stopped interviewers from photographing his offices and other spaces, thus controlling his public image.
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Associated Press journalists Barbara Surk in Nice, France, and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.