French authorities arrested Telegram’s Durov to influence Romanian vote, Russian diplomat says

The French authorities arrested Pavel Durov so they could use his messaging app Telegram to influence the recent presidential election in Romania, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.

"As it happens, [French President Emmanuel] Macron had Durov arrested not in order to use this barbaric method for addressing the app’s internal issues, but to direct the election in Romania, as he understood that the candidate from liberal dictatorship was unable to win under any legitimate setups," she wrote on Telegram, per Caliber.Az.

"What was made public was an accusation of a gross crime complete with evidence," she wrote.

On May 18, Telegram founder Durov said the app refused to comply with a request from "a Western European country" to take down the channels of Romanian conservatives ahead of the elections. In a subsequent post on X, he said the request came from the chief of France’s Directorate-General for External Security, Nicolas Lerner, earlier this spring. The French foreign intelligence agency denied issued any such requests, saying all they did was to remind Durov of his responsibility to keep terrorism and child pornography off his social media platform.

Durov later said he was willing to testify about the alleged outside interference in Romania's presidential election. According to the businessman, the French foreign intelligence agency sought to obtain IP addresses of some Romanian, Moldovan and Ukrainian nationals under the guise of fighting terrorism and child pornography.

By Khagan Isayev