Russian-born Telegram founder ordered to French court to face possible charges
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00:00We can bring in our international affairs commentator, Douglas Herbert.
00:02Doug, great to see you.
00:04Durov's period in custody has come to an end.
00:06What exactly happens now?
00:08Ah, the tough questions.
00:09Yeah.
00:10Look, all that's really concluded right now is that the judge said
00:12the period of police questioning is over.
00:15The police had up to four days, 96 hours
00:18beyond the initial 25 hours after his arrest to question him.
00:22After that, they had to basically end that initial questioning
00:26and either free him or transfer him to a judge.
00:28Now, this judge, it's an investigative judge, is going to have to decide,
00:32this is a French magistrate, is going to decide whether to pursue the probe.
00:37That is to launch what is called a formal investigation.
00:40Now, doing so, if this judge and we're supposed to hear it later tonight,
00:44I think 8 p.m.
00:45Paris time, if the decision is yes, we believe that there is enough
00:49to go on from the initial police questioning to pursue a formal probe,
00:53a formal investigation.
00:54It doesn't imply guilt.
00:56It doesn't mean that he's guilty.
00:58It doesn't even imply that there's going to be a trial.
01:00It just means that they want to be able to investigate further.
01:05So that's really all we know at this time.
01:06Now, a pretrial detention is possible.
01:09Pretrial detention is just that.
01:11It would mean that he would literally be put back under arrest
01:14pending a further probe if perhaps he were deemed to be a flight risk.
01:19Now, you might speculate that, you know, there's a lot of hard
01:22bargaining going on behind closed doors and that if they even if they were
01:26to pursue this investigation further, they may not keep him in custody.
01:30They may not have the wherewithal to do so.
01:33And he might be just free to walk if they don't deem him to be a flight risk.
01:37There are a lot of tricky judicial questions.
01:39The French judicial system is not always very straightforward here.
01:44But what we do know is he's not out of the woods yet.
01:46And I'll tell you, you know, it's been obviously
01:48the center of attention, right, since his arrest,
01:50since Telegram became the center of this investigation,
01:54basically on charges that he allowed criminals to run rampant on his platform.
01:58Now, Durov is a Franco-Russian citizen.
02:01Yes, he is.
02:02From what we understand, he still has his Russian passport.
02:04And a United Arab Emirates citizen as well, UAE.
02:07Indeed. Now, Moscow has rushed to his defense after his arrest,
02:11but he's had a thorny relationship with Russia, hasn't he?
02:13I was going to say, if this were one of these Facebook statuses,
02:16it would be it's complicated.
02:18When it comes to Putin, the Kremlin and Durov.
02:20No, it has not been. It's been anything but straightforward.
02:23In 2014, Pavel Durov essentially, you know, it was a year in which he fled Russia.
02:29He was essentially forced into this self exile.
02:32Why? Because it was a time when Vladimir Putin was beginning
02:35to tighten the noose around the Internet, to crack down on the Internet.
02:38And part of that crackdown and that tightening of the noose
02:41was taking control of what was then the the VKontakte platform,
02:45which was the original platform set up.
02:47It was Russia's Facebook preceding Telegram.
02:50And the Kremlin basically took control of that after Pavel Durov reports
02:54had been at the time he refused to release data to Russian authorities.
02:59They had been seeking it on Ukrainian protesters.
03:02This is back in 2014.
03:04So he fled Russia back then, right?
03:06You presumably he was at odds with the Kremlin.
03:08But the irony is today, Telegram has become more important than ever,
03:11not just to pro-democracy activists who see it as a place to recruit
03:15and to organize and to plan and to discuss and to communicate,
03:19but also to the very governments that they're protesting against,
03:22who also use it in the case of the Russian military.
03:25And on the flip side, the Ukrainian military to communicate
03:28among small groups, to organize and to plan operations.
03:33Doug, authorities in France and Europe have had issues
03:36with other media platforms, social media platforms, messaging platforms,
03:40what have you.
03:42Why was Pavel Durov and Telegram specifically targeted?
03:45Yeah, Telegram. It's very true.
03:47We have not had such a high profile arrest of this nature,
03:52of one of these tech titans really up until now.
03:54You had some skirmishes between the Brazilian
03:58and U.S. authorities over WhatsApp back in a back in about five
04:02or six years ago, seven years ago.
04:04What's happening here is Telegram has been on the radar of law
04:07enforcement authorities, not just in Europe, but on the U.S.
04:10and elsewhere for a while, because it has been seen as a safe harbor,
04:14if you will, for groups such as terrorist organizations,
04:18such as drug dealers, such as weapons dealers,
04:22people who peddle in images child sexual abuse.
04:26That is one of the reported charges for which Pavel Durov's platform
04:30is accused of or allegedly complicit in letting those types of pedophilia
04:36type images proliferate on the platform.
04:38All of this has put Telegram front and center.
04:41And it is also shown a very harsh spotlight on Telegram.
04:44Obviously, it's not alone in the tech universe over that grander debate
04:49over where does free speech end and where does law enforcement
04:54and government regulation begin?
04:56Where do you draw that fine line between the two?
04:59If you're a free speech absolutist, say like Elon Musk,
05:03who is staunchly defended Pavel Durov, you come down very much
05:06on the side of free speech to the max.
05:09There are essentially no limits.
05:11If you are one who believes that you cannot cry fire in a crowded theater,
05:16there is a limit to free speech, then you obviously are going to believe
05:20that you cannot take too light a touch.
05:21You have to have some government regulation in there
05:24in the interests of free speech and citizens protection.
05:27Let's see what happens in front of that judge today.
05:29Thank you very much for that, Doug Harper.