Pavel Durov, the founder of the Messaging App Telegram that was sued in France last year with a series of crimes with regard to illegal activities on the app, has temporarily allowed the country.
Mr. Durov was excluded from leaving France, but the office of the public prosecutor said Monday that the investigating judges who treated his case had lifted the travel restrictions between March 15 and April 7, when he had to return to France.
“I returned to Dubai after having spent a few months in France because of an investigation of criminals' activity on Telegram,” said Mr Durov, an entrepreneur born in Russia who also has citizenship in France and the United Arab Emirates. “The process is underway, but it feels great to be at home.”
Mr. Durov, 40, was held near Paris last August and forbade to leave the country while being investigated. It was a rare step of the French legal authorities, who personally accused him with complicity by running an online platform that was seen as illegal activities. After he was released from detention last year, he had to check in at a police station twice a week.
Mr Durov is confronted with a possible punishment up to 10 years in prison. He was also accused of complicity in crimes, such as making the distribution of sexual abuse of children, drug trafficking and fraud and refusal to collaborate with law enforcement.
Mr Durov has criticized the French authorities for the arrest and says that he cannot be held personally responsible for what users post on telegram. But the company has made several changes since August to monitor its platform more aggressively and to be more cooperative at law enforcement authorities around the world.
“When it comes to moderation, cooperation and combating crime, Telegram has not only met for years, but also surpassed the legal obligations,” Mr Durov said on Monday.
Telegram, which Mr Durov founded in 2013, says it has more than one billion users. The scarce supervision of content -generated content has made it popular with people who live under authoritarian governments, but lax supervision has also allowed hateful rhetoric and harmful content to Fester.
The French case brought an international debate about freedom of expression on the responsibility of the internet and technology companies to monitor the speech and actions of platform users. Some governments, especially in the European Union, are increasingly investigating technology companies and put pressure on them to tackle the safety of children, terrorism, disinformation and the spread of other harmful content.
In France, Telegram has been involved in several criminal cases associated with sexual abuse of children, drug trafficking and virtual hate crimes. The best public prosecutor in Paris, Laure Beccuau, said last year that the organization showed an “near-total absence” of response when asked to collaborate with law enforcement.
Mr Durov is one of a small but growing list of high -level technical figures accused of crimes committed by users of their platforms, including Ross W. Ulbricht, the maker of the Silk Road Virtual Black Market, and Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, who argued for the US money last year.
President Trump gassed Mr Ulbricht in January.
Aurelien varieties Reported report from Paris contributed.
