Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s numerous citizenships add to the thriller of his detention

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Over greater than a decade, the founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram has amassed numerous totally different citizenships, one thing that’s solely added to the thriller surrounding his detention in France.

These passports offered Pavel Durov safety after he created and ran Telegram as a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist. The app has been utilized by some to plan protests in repressive governments like in Iran and his native Russia. Nevertheless, Western governments allege Telegram aided the work of drug traffickers, cash launderers, militant teams and baby pornographers.

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“To be actually free, you have to be able to danger every little thing for freedom,” Durov as soon as wrote on Instagram, interspersed between photographs of himself shirtless with the skyscrapers of Dubai or the ruins of Mada’in Saleh in Saudi Arabia behind him.

That danger now seems to have caught up with him, regardless of passports from Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, and his wealth, estimated by Forbes to be $15.5 billion.

Durov was free of French custody Wednesday after being arrested Saturday at Paris-Le Bourget Airport. Allegations embody that his platform is getting used for baby sexual abuse materials and drug trafficking, fraud and abetting organized crime transactions, and that Telegram refused to share info or paperwork with investigators when required by regulation. He’s anticipated to look in court docket later Wednesday.

Durov, 39, apparently started searching for different citizenships greater than a decade in the past. The impetus got here, in accordance with him, from a dispute over management of VKontakte, “In Contact,” generally known as VK, a social media web site that on the time outpaced Fb in Russia.

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Russian safety companies had moved to dam pages related to a Ukrainian protest motion that helped oust the nation’s Kremlin-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, from energy. Durov posted on-line what gave the impression to be paperwork from Federal Safety Service, or FSB, demanding private information on teams linked to the protests.

After resigning on April Idiot’s Day, first apparently in jest, Durov left VK for good. He reportedly obtained a residency visa to Dubai, the enterprise hub of the United Arab Emirates. He additionally acquired a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport, reportedly by contributing $250,000 to the Caribbean nation’s sugar trade.

Saint Kitts and Nevis stays well-liked as a tax haven for the rich and for these with passports requiring onerous visas to journey to different international locations.

Durov stated in a VK submit in 2017 that he acquired a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport within the spring of 2013 and known as it “a handy factor, because it permits to journey to the EU and Britain with out visas.”

He added that he had by no means truly been to the Caribbean island nation — nor did he have any plans to journey there — and that “one can get the passport with out leaving Europe.”

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By 2017, Durov was dwelling full-time in Dubai, along with his Telegram workplace working from Dubai Media Metropolis.

“I adore it right here,” he informed Bloomberg on the time. “It’s growing so quick, like a start-up.” The information group put his wealth on the time at $300 million and a couple of,000 bitcoins — a cryptocurrency that noticed its worth skyrocket within the time since.

Someday on this interval, the United Arab Emirates granted Durov citizenship — a rarity in a rustic the place 90% of its inhabitants are foreigners with no path to citizenship.

The UAE has not defined why it granted Durov citizenship, although its state-run WAM information company on Tuesday publicly acknowledged his citizenship and requested France to supply him “with all the required consular companies in an pressing matter.” Below Emirati regulation, traders, medical doctors, specialists and intellectuals could be placed on the trail to citizenship, if authorized by one of many nation’s seven rulers, a crown prince or the federal authorities in his autocratic nation.

Durov had been photographed in a gathering with Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai, in 2021. A WAM report on the time described Telegram as being “globally headquartered in Dubai” and value greater than $20 billion.

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The UAE, Dubai specifically, has been making an attempt to woo web and e-commerce corporations for years. Durov joined an advisory council to its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, as properly. Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala the identical yr invested $75 million into Telegram, as did one other Abu Dhabi agency.

His French citizenship stays extra murky.

Durov formally turned French citizen in 2021, and his title was revealed within the naturalization part of France’s Official Gazette on August 25 of that yr. In Could 2022 he formally modified the transliteration of his title in French to Paul du Rove, in accordance with a authorities decree.

Particulars of Durov’s French naturalization course of — an extended and cumbersome bureaucratic ordeal for many — are sealed from public scrutiny due to French privateness practices.

Durov didn’t seem to satisfy customary necessities of legally dwelling within the nation for 2 to 5 years or having relations who had been French, however might have certified for a uncommon citizenship route for specifically “merited foreigners.” In keeping with the French authorities, this is applicable to French-speaking foreigners who “contribute by means of their merited motion to the worldwide affect of France and the prosperity of its worldwide financial relations.”

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Durov and French President Emmanuel Macron met in 2018, and had a dialogue like these the French president has recurrently with world enterprise leaders about growing their actions in France, in accordance with an official acquainted with the assembly.

Durov later sought French citizenship by way of a request to the French International Ministry, not by way of Macron immediately, the official stated.

The official spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to be publicly named talking about personal presidential conferences.

France and the UAE keep an in depth army relationship, with French forces working a naval base in Abu Dhabi and Emirati forces utilizing Leclerc tanks and Rafale fighter jets. Macron is also seen to be near Emirati chief Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi. The arrest sparked a faked video on-line late Tuesday, falsely attributed to the Al Jazeera satellite tv for pc information community, that an arms deal between the international locations was in danger.

However like a lot with Durov, particulars stay murky. He had stopped interviewers at instances from photographing his workplaces and different areas, controlling his picture to the skin world.

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Related Press writers Barbara Surk in Good, France, and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

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