Telegram’s Durov says France asked to remove some Moldovan channels from app

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MOSCOW -Pavel Durov, the billionaire founder of the Telegram messaging app, accused French intelligence on Sunday of having asked him through an intermediary to censor some Moldovan voices in return for help with his court case in France.

Moldovans were voting in a parliamentary election on Sunday that could have a major impact on the government’s quest to join the European Union, as a pro-Russian opposition group seeks to steer the nation away from closer ties with the bloc.

In a post in English on X, the French foreign ministry noted that Durov had made similar accusations about France trying to manipulate politics in Romania earlier this year, around the time of elections there: “After Romania, Moldova. @durov likes making accusations while elections are ongoing.”

Durov was arrested in 2024 at a French airport and is under judicial supervision in France while being investigated for suspected organised crime on the app. 

Durov denies guilt and has said the accusations by France are “legally and logically absurd”.

DUROV SAYS HE WAS ASKED TO CENSOR CHANNELS

Durov said on Sunday that while he was stuck in Paris, French intelligence used an intermediary, whom he did not identify, to ask him to “censor” some Telegram channels for the Moldovan government.

Durov said “a few that clearly violated our rules” were removed and that the intermediary told him that in exchange, French intelligence would “say good things” about him to the judge who ordered his arrest, which he said was “unacceptable”.

“If the agency did in fact approach the judge — it constituted an attempt to interfere in the judicial process,” Durov said. “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….”

FRANCE DENIED PAST ACCUSATIONS

Durov said in May that the head of France’s foreign intelligence agency asked him to ban Romanian conservative voices ahead of elections there. France’s DGSE, the foreign intelligence service, denied that at the time. 

Telegram was founded by Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he has sold.

The encrypted application, with over 1 billion monthly active users, is particularly influential in former Soviet states including Russia and Ukraine.

(Writing by Guy FaulconbridgeAdditional reporting by Gus TrompizEditing by Andrew Cawthorne and Peter Graff)