Telegram Founder Pavel Durov’s Various Citizenships Add To The Mystery Of His Detention

DUBAI, UAE —For more than a decade, the founder and CEO of messaging software Telegram has acquired many citizenships, adding to the mystery surrounding his arrest in France.

These passports protected Pavel Durov after he founded and controlled Telegram as a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist. Some have used the app to plan protests in hostile regimes such as Iran and his own Russia. However, Western officials claim Telegram supported drug traffickers, money launderers, militant groups, and child pornographers.

“To be truly free, you must be willing to risk everything for freedom,” Durov once said on Instagram, sandwiched between photos of himself shirtless with Dubai’s skyscrapers or Saudi Arabia’s Mada’in Saleh ruins in the background.

That danger appears to have caught up with him, despite passports from Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and Saint Kitts & Nevis, as well as Forbes’ assessment of his wealth at $15.5 billion.

Telegram Founder Pavel Durov’s Various Citizenships Add To The Mystery Of His Detention

Durov was released from French jail on Wednesday after being arrested Saturday at Paris-Le Bourget Airport. Allegations include the use of his platform for child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking, fraud, and aiding and abetting organized criminal activities, as well as Telegram’s refusal to give information or records to investigators when legally needed. He is scheduled to appear in court later Wednesday.

Durov, 39, appears to have begun seeking additional citizenships over a decade ago. According to him, the reason was a battle over control of VKontakte, or “In Contact,” often known as VK, a social networking website that at the time outperformed Facebook in Russia.

Russian security services blocked pages associated with a Ukrainian protest movement that helped depose the country’s Kremlin-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych. Durov released what seemed to be paperwork from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, requesting personal information about protest organizations.

Durov left VK permanently after resigning on April Fools Day, first in jest. He secured a resident visa for Dubai, the UAE’s business powerhouse. He also acquired a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport after purportedly providing $250,000 to the Caribbean’s sugar economy.

Saint Kitts and Nevis remains attractive as a tax haven for the wealthy and people with passports that require lengthy visas to go to other nations.

Durov stated in a VK post 2017 that he got a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport in the spring of 2013 and described it as “a convenient thing, as it allows to travel to the EU and Britain without visas.”

He said that he had never been to the Caribbean island nation and had no intentions of going there and that “one can get the passport without leaving Europe.”

By 2017, Durov lived full-time in Dubai, with his Telegram office based in Dubai Media City.

“I love it here,” he told Bloomberg back then. “It’s developing so fast, like a start-up.” The news organization estimated his wealth at the time to be $300 million and 2,000 bitcoins, a cryptocurrency whose value has since skyrocketed.

During this time, the United Arab Emirates gave Durov citizenship, a rare occurrence in a country where 90% of the population is foreign and has no road to citizenship.

The UAE has not explained why it granted Durov citizenship, but on Tuesday, its state-run WAM news agency publicly acknowledged his status and asked France to provide him “with all the necessary consular services in an urgent matter.” Under Emirati legislation, investors, doctors, professionals, and intellectuals can be granted citizenship if approved by one of the country’s seven rulers, a crown prince, or the federal government of his homeland.

Durov was spotted in a meeting with Dubai’s crown prince, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, in 2021. A WAM article at the time claimed Telegram as “globally headquartered in Dubai” and worth more than $20 billion.

The UAE, particularly Dubai, has sought to attract internet and e-commerce companies for years. Durov also served on an advisory council for its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, invested $75 million in Telegram that same year, as did another Abu Dhabi enterprise.

His French citizenship still needs to be clarified.

Durov became a French citizen in 2021, and his name was published in the naturalization section of France’s Official Gazette on August 25 of that same year. According to a government order, he will formally change the transliteration of his name in French to Paul du Rove in May 2022.

Because of French privacy laws, the details of Durov’s French naturalization procedure, a lengthy and cumbersome bureaucratic nightmare for most, are kept from public view.

Durov did not appear to match the conventional conditions of lawfully living in the nation for two to five years or having French family members, but he may have qualified for a rare citizenship route reserved for “merited foreigners.” According to the French government, this applies to French-speaking foreigners who “contribute through their merited action to the global influence of France and the prosperity of its international economic relations.”

According to an official acquainted with the conversation, Durov and French President Emmanuel Macron met in 2018 and discussed the development of their activities in France, similar to the discussions the French president holds with global corporate leaders regularly.

Telegram Founder Pavel Durov’s Various Citizenships Add To The Mystery Of His Detention

The official stated that Durov later requested French citizenship through a request to the French Foreign Ministry rather than directly from Macron.

The individual spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to publicly discuss private presidential conversations.

France and the UAE have a tight military cooperation, with French forces maintaining a naval facility in Abu Dhabi and Emirati forces employing Leclerc tanks and Rafale fighter jets. Macron is also said to be close to Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi. The arrest generated a falsified video online late Tuesday, purportedly attributed to the Al Jazeera satellite news network, claiming that an arms deal between the countries was under threat.

However, as is typical of Durov, things remain unclear. He had occasionally prevented interviewers from photographing his offices and other surroundings, thereby managing his public image.

SOURCE | AP