Telegram founder, Pavel Durov has been released from police custody in France on Wednesday , 28 August, 2024 and transferred to court for questioning ahead of a possible indictment CNN reports.
A CNN producer noted hat Durov exited the anti-fraud office outside Paris in what appeared to be a police vehicle on Wednesday afternoon, according to a CNN producer there.
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, the Russian Billionaire would now face “initial questioning and possible indictment” at a court in the French capital.
'Durov was arrested on saturday at Paris Bourget Airport under a warrant for offences connected to the popular messaging app, Telegram.
In a recent statement, Telegram asserted that Durov has "nothing to hide" and emphasized the app's compliance with EU laws and industry standards regarding moderation.
Notably, the reclusive Russian exile rarely grants media interviews but frequently shares personal insights and updates through his Telegram channel, which has garnered over 11 million subscribers.
In past posts, Durov has shared unconventional aspects of his life, including adopting a radical diet that eliminated food consumption to enhance productivity in 2019, and recently revealing that he has over 100 children.
“I was just told that I have over 100 biological kids,” he wrote in a post to his official Telegram channel on 29 July. “Fifteen years ago, a friend of mine approached me with a weird request. He said that he and his wife couldn’t have kids due to a fertility issue and asked me to donate sperm at a clinic for them to have a baby.
“The boss of the clinic told me that ‘high quality donor material’ was in short supply and that it was my civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples... Fast forward to 2024, my past donating activity has helped over a hundred couples in 12 countries to have kids. Moreover, many years after I stopped being a donor, at least one IVF clinic still has my frozen sperm available for anonymous use by families who want to have kids.”
The tech billionaire added that he plans to “open-source” his DNA so that his biological children can find each other more easily.
“Of course there are risks,” he told his 11 million subscribers, “but I don’t regret having been a donor. The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious issue worldwide, and I’m proud that I did my part to help alleviate it.”
His arrest has drawn condemnation from privacy and free speech advocates, with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden describing it as “an assault on the basic human rights of speech and association”.
