Pavel Durov Says French Authorities Should Submit Complaints To Telegram, Not Hold It

Pavel Durov. (Wikimedia Commons/TechCrunch/Schreibvieh)

JAKARTA - Telegram messaging app founder Pavel Durov said on Friday morning French authorities should have filed a complaint with his company instead of detaining him while he was under an official investigation in the country.

Writing on his Telegram channel in his first public comments since his detention last month, Durov denied the assumption the app was an anarchic "serega".

He said the investigation into the app was surprising, as French authorities had access to the "phone channel" he had helped build and they could contact Telegram representatives in the European Union at any time.

"If a country is unhappy with Internet services, the applicable practice is to file legal action against the service itself," he wrote.

"Using the law from the pre-smart phone era to indict the CEO of crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach," Durov criticized.

Telegram, he said, was not perfect, but he denied any abuse related to the application.

"But claims in some media that Telegram is some kind of anarchic paradise are completely untrue," he wrote.

"We delete millions of malicious posts and channels every day," said Durov.

Durov, who was born in Russia but is now a French citizen, was detained late last month in France, amid investigations into crimes linked to child pornography, drug trafficking, and fraudulent transactions linked to the app.