NEW YORK, June 9. /TASS/. Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov expressed hope that his arrest in France was not motivated by his ethnicity.
US journalist Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Durov, said: "If Mark Zuckerberg or Elon [Musk] got grabbed, you know, at the private part of de Gaulle Airport, you'd be like, ‘Stop the plane! What? The world is ending!’ But they grabbed you, and people like, ‘Oh, he's got a Russian last name. It's fine. I'm sure there's a good reason’."
Durov responded: "I hope it had nothing to do with my ethnicity."
"Of course, it did, are you joking?" Carlson said.
"That would be very alarming," Durov replied.
Durov said nothing of that kind happened to him in countries which the West considers authoritarian. In his words, he visited some of them before his arrest in Paris.
When asked whether he was ever detained in Russia, Durov replied: "No."
Durov was detained at Paris’ Le Bourget airport on August 24, 2024 on a number of charges, including complicity in administering an online platform to facilitate illegal transactions, committed within a criminal group, which, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office, can carry a punishment of up to ten years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros. By decision of an investigating judge, the entrepreneur was placed under judicial supervision with an obligation to post a bail of 5 mln euros. He was also bound to report twice a week to the police and was forbidden to leave France.
After he was allowed to leave France in late March, Durov moved to Dubai but was to be back in France on April 7 in line with the judicial supervision terms. The Paris prosecutor’s office told TASS that it had not been notified about any violations by Durov but did not say whether Durov is in France or not.