MOSCOW, April 20. /TASS/. Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov has said he is facing "over a dozen" charges in France, which carry up to ten years in prison each.

"Macron’s France is losing legitimacy as it weaponizes criminal investigations to suppress free speech and privacy. <...> I’m under a similar investigation in France: over a dozen charges, each carrying up to ten years in prison," Durov wrote on Telegram, commenting on the US Department of Justice’s refusal to assist a French probe into Elon Musk’s X social network.

French investigation into Durov

On August 24, 2024, Durov was detained at Le Bourget airport in Paris on a number of charges, including complicity in the administration of a network platform to commit illegal transactions as part of an organized criminal group. Such an offense, according to the Paris prosecutor's office, can be punishable by up to ten years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros. By the decision of the investigating judge, he was allowed to post a bail of five million euro and was placed under judicial control. Durov was also banned from leaving France and ordered to report to a police station twice a week.

French probe into X

In February, Paris prosecutors, Europol and a French cybercrime unit raided the French offices of Elon Musk’s X social media platform. According to the Agence France-Presse media outlet, the move was part of an investigation launched in January 2025, following complaints about X’s algorithms, its integrated Grok chatbot, which published materials denying the Holocaust, and artificially generated sexual images. The Paris prosecutor's office summoned Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino for questioning on April 20.