French authorities list out 12 charges explaining Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest

The office of the French prosecutor, which spearheaded the arrest of Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov, has listed out twelve charges explaining the arrest of the Russian billionaire in a public statement.

The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office said that Durov’s arrest comes in the context of a judicial investigation that was opened on July 8 this year, following a preliminary inquiry initiated by the cybercrime unit of the prosecutor’s office.

Durov, who holds Russian, French, Kittitian, and Emirati citizenship, was arrested on Saturday on the outskirts of Paris and then taken into police custody at 8 p.m. local time, the statement from Monday said.

The French prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, has brought up the following charges against Durov:

1. Complicity – web-mastering an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction in organized group.
2. Refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law.
3. Complicity – possessing pornographic images of minors.
4. Complicity – distributing, offering or making available pornographic images of minors, in organized group.
5. Complicity – acquiring, transporting, possessing, offering or selling narcotic substances.
6. Complicity – offering, selling or making available, without legitimate reason, equipment, tools, programs or data designed for or adapted to get access to and to damage the operation of an automated data processing system.
7. Complicity – organized fraud.
8. Criminal association with a view to committing a crime or an offense punishable by 5 or more years of imprisonment.
9. Laundering of the proceeds derived from organized group’s offences and crimes.
10. Providing cryptology services aiming to ensure confidentiality without certified declaration.
11. Providing a cryptology tool not solely ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration.
12. Importing a cryptology tool ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration.

“The investigative magistrates in charge of this preliminary judicial investigation have requested a co-referral of the Centre for the Fight against Cybercrime (Centre de lutte contre les criminalités numériques, C3N) and the Anti-Fraud National Office (Office National Anti-Fraude, ONAF) for the pursuance of the investigations. It is within this procedural framework in which Pavel Durov was questioned by the investigators,” the English translation of the official statement said.

Durov’s custody period was extended until August 25 by an investigative magistrate and can last up to 96 hours until August 28, the statement concluded.