Telegram CEO Charged With Facilitating Child Porn

NBC News reports:

Pavel Durov, the CEO and co-founder of the news and messaging app Telegram, has been charged in France with enabling various forms of criminality in the app, French prosecutors said Wednesday.

One of the charges — complicity in administering an online platform permitting illicit transactions by an organized group — carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros ($555,750).

It marks one of the few instances in which the CEO of a major internet platform has been charged over alleged criminal failure to moderate what users do on its platform.

Politico Europe reports:

The charges include complicity in managing an online platform “in order to enable an illegal transaction in organized group,” and refusal to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a press release dated Wednesday.

Durov was also charged with “complicity in the offenses of making available without legitimate reason a program or data designed for… organized gang distribution of images of minors presenting child pornography, drug trafficking.”

Telegram “appears in multiple cases involving various offenses (child sexual abuse offenses, trafficking, online hate),” the prosecutor’s office wrote, pointing to “Telegram’s almost total failure to respond to judicial requests.”

Elon Musk better avoid France, at least for now.

Breaking: Telegram’s founder was charged by French authorities for crimes including complicity in distributing child porn, illegal drugs and hacking software on the app https://t.co/upm5DIMM0d https://t.co/upm5DIMM0d

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) August 28, 2024