French President Emmanuel Macron asked Telegram CEO Pavel Durov to move the company headquarters to Paris back in 2018, an offer he refused.
Fast forward six years and Durov was arrested in France at the behest of the Macron regime.
The revelations were first revealed in a bombshell report from The Wall Street Journal:
Six years before Pavel Durov landed in a French holding cell, the antiestablishment founder of the messaging app Telegram was in a very different position in France: having lunch with President Emmanuel Macron.
At the lunch in 2018, which hasn’t been previously reported, Macron invited the Russian-born Durov to move Telegram to Paris, people familiar with the discussions said. Durov declined at the time. The French leader even discussed granting French citizenship to him, one of the people said. A French official said Durov asked Macron for citizenship.
On Saturday, French authorities detained Durov in an investigation that poses the most serious threat to the antiauthority ethos of Telegram since the app was founded in 2013. His arrest has brought into sharp focus the fraught relationships the 39-year-old Durov has had with governments around the world, which have attempted to woo and control him, often failing at both.
According to French prosecutors, Durov is complicit in a variety of criminal activities which include enabling drug trafficking and child pornography for hosting a social media platform.
Note that Mark Zuckerberg is not on the arrest list despite his platforms very public issues with child exploitation.
BREAKING: Telegram CEO Arrested by French Authorities for Refusing to Follow Censorship Laws
However, their real motivation is really about Durov’s refusal to comply with censorship demands aimed at curtaling freedom of speech around the world.
The Associated Press notes:
The first preliminary charge against him was for ‘’complicity in managing an online platform to allow illicit transactions by an organized group,’’ a crime that can lead to sentences of up to 10 years in prison and 500,000 euro fine, the prosecutor’s office said.
Preliminary charges under French law mean magistrates have strong reason to believe a crime was committed but allow more time for further investigation. Prosecutors said that Pavel Durov is, “at this stage, the only person implicated in this case.
They did not exclude the possibility that other people are being investigated, but declined to comment on other possible arrest warrants. Any other arrest warrant would be revealed only if the target of such a warrant is detained and informed of their rights, prosecutors said in a statement to the AP.
President Macron’s specific involvement in Durov’s arrest still remains unclear. Earlier this week, he took to the X platform to falsely claim that the French judiciary was acting with “full independence” and that his government remains “deeply commmitted to freedom of expressiong and communication.”
I have seen false information regarding France following the arrest of Pavel Durov.
France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship. It will remain so.
In a state governed by the rule of law,…
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) August 26, 2024
