Telegram founder and chief executive officer Pavel Durov has broken silence on his arrest and criminal charges.
According to BBC, Durov, in a first statement since his arrest and over the alleged illegal activities on his social media-cim-messaging platform Telegram, said he is ‘surprised’ that he has been held responsible for the crime done by the third parties.
He said, “Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach."
The Russian-born tech entrepreneur further wrote, “Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”
Durov noted that French authorities had ‘numerous ways’ to reach him, even though there is an official representative of the platform in the EU who has a publicly available email, but the Franc’s approach to handling the case could hurt innovation in tech.
He emphasised, “The claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day.”
Durov was arrested by the French authorities from the airport near Paris on August 25.
