Telegram founder Pavel Durov on Sunday accused France of asking him to remove some Moldovan channels from the social media platform ahead of the country’s presidential election last year.
In a statement on the Dubai-headquartered company, Durov claimed that the French intelligence services asked him “through an intermediary” to help the Moldovan government to censor “certain Telegram channels” before the vote on Oct. 20, in which incumbent President Maia Sandu secured a second term in office following a runoff held on Nov. 3.
He said a few channels were identified to have violated Telegram’s rules following reviews of the channels concerned and were subsequently removed.
“The intermediary then informed me that, in exchange for this cooperation, French intelligence would ‘say good things’ about me to the judge who had ordered my arrest in August last year,” Durov said, describing this as “unacceptable on several levels.”
“If the agency did in fact approach the judge — it constituted an attempt to interfere in the judicial process. If it did not, and merely claimed to have done so, then it was exploiting my legal situation in France to influence political developments in Eastern Europe — a pattern we have also observed in Romania,” he further said.
Durov also said that Telegram later received a second list of "Moldovan channels," which he noted were “legitimate and fully compliant with our rules,” unlike the initial list.
In a statement on the Dubai-headquartered company, Durov claimed that the French intelligence services asked him “through an intermediary” to help the Moldovan government to censor “certain Telegram channels” before the vote on Oct. 20, in which incumbent President Maia Sandu secured a second term in office following a runoff held on Nov. 3.
He said a few channels were identified to have violated Telegram’s rules following reviews of the channels concerned and were subsequently removed.
“The intermediary then informed me that, in exchange for this cooperation, French intelligence would ‘say good things’ about me to the judge who had ordered my arrest in August last year,” Durov said, describing this as “unacceptable on several levels.”
“If the agency did in fact approach the judge — it constituted an attempt to interfere in the judicial process. If it did not, and merely claimed to have done so, then it was exploiting my legal situation in France to influence political developments in Eastern Europe — a pattern we have also observed in Romania,” he further said.
Durov also said that Telegram later received a second list of "Moldovan channels," which he noted were “legitimate and fully compliant with our rules,” unlike the initial list.
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https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/telegram-head-accuses-france...