MOSCOW, September 6. /TASS/. Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who was recently detained in Paris, under certain conditions may hand over encryption keys to French intelligence against his will, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev told TASS.
"I once invited him to a meeting, back in 2015 or 2016, and told him: look, you do realize that everything you are doing may be unsafe for the country. Terrorists may take advantage of all this. So probably you will have to give up these encryption keys sooner or later. And he goes: ‘I will never give this to anyone!’ This is verbatim. Never, to anyone! I think he really believes it," Medvedev said.
However, the Russian official noted that under serious pressure Durov might hand over the encryption keys to French intelligence.
"If his life takes a wrong turn, and there are reasons to believe it might, then he will have no choice," Medvedev said.
However, the politician thinks that the French authorities will have to release Durov sooner or later in order not to tarnish their reputation due to the general negative reaction to his detention. "He will still be released, I have no doubt. It's just that they, Macron included, do not want to be dragged through the mud with all this negative reaction," Medvedev said.
Durov was detained at Le Bourget airport on August 24. On August 28, his preliminary custody was over. The entrepreneur was delivered to a court, where the prosecutor charged Durov with six offenses, which include complicity in the administration of an online platform that enabled illegal transactions, committed within a criminal group. The offense, according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office, is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros. By decision of an investigating judge, the entrepreneur went under judicial supervision with an obligation to post bail of 5 mln euros. He also has to report twice a week to the police and is forbidden to leave France.