PARIS, July 9. /TASS/. Nicolas Lerner, who heads France’s secret service, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), denied Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov’s accusations about interference into the presidential election in Romania.
In May, Durov claimed that Lerner asked him to block Telegram channels of Romanian conservatives in the run-up to the presidential election. "I indeed had an opportunity to meet with Mr. Durov to discuss cooperation between secret services and encrypted messengers, which is an important security question for us. We held a detailed exchange of opinions, and, as long as I remember, at the end of the meeting, Mr. Durov described it as constructive and very interesting," Lerner told the LCI television.
Lerner also said he did not travel to Romania in his capacity as the DGSE chief.
On May 18, Telegram founder Durov said the app refused to comply with a request from "a Western European country" to take down the channels of Romanian conservatives ahead of the elections. In a subsequent post on X, he said the request came from the chief of France’s Directorate-General for External Security, Nicolas Lerner, earlier this spring. The French foreign intelligence agency denied any such requests, saying all they did was to remind Durov of his responsibility to keep terrorism and child pornography off his social media platform.
Durov later said he was willing to testify about the alleged outside interference in Romania's presidential election. According to the businessman, the French foreign intelligence agency sought to obtain IP addresses of some Romanian, Moldovan and Ukrainian nationals under the guise of fighting terrorism and child pornography.