Transcript of Telegram Founder Pavel Durov on Tucker Carlson Show

Like, I know 16 charges, all kinds of crimes. I was very confused at first because, like, I have nothing to do with crime. I’ve never been convicted. I have, you know, we are a company that is trying to comply with the best standards. And so at that moment, I realized that it’s not something I did, it’s something other people did. Using the app, I created Telegram, which is used by a billion people. So, yes, probably some people…

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you know all of them or…

PAVEL DUROV: Unfortunately not.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.

Four Days in Solitary Confinement

PAVEL DUROV: I try my best to meet more, but… So, yeah. And then I was put into a car and with a small motorcade, police cars with sirens and… Which is funny, because in the previous countries that I visited, I also was accompanied by motorcades because I was visiting the heads of states there. And here in France, there was certain consistency. So I was treated in the same way.

TUCKER CARLSON: So to say, were you, like, texting?

PAVEL DUROV: I couldn’t because they took my phone and I wasn’t allowed.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like, they immediately took your phone?

PAVEL DUROV: Yeah. I wasn’t allowed to contact anyone except for my assistant, who I asked to find me some lawyers and reach out to certain friends that I have and try to understand what was going on. And then I spent four days in police custody. The building in south of Paris that is, I think, run by the police customs. The customs, police officers or department, whatever. And there I had to answer a lot of questions.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you spent four days with no contact, no phone? Yes. In what kind of accommodations was a…

PAVEL DUROV: 7 square meter room or 70 square feet room, no windows, concrete block, a bed this narrow, no linen, no pillow, mattress this thin, like yoga mat. This thin, maybe 1cm half inch and that’s it. And constantly blinking light, which was a bit annoying.

TUCKER CARLSON: Locked door.

PAVEL DUROV: There’s… Yeah, the door was very securely locked, I must say.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re in a… You’re in a cell.

PAVEL DUROV: Yes, it was a solitary cell, so to say there were no other people there.

TUCKER CARLSON: So they put you in solitary confinement?

PAVEL DUROV: You could say that, yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that sounds like that’s what it is.

PAVEL DUROV: Well, it wasn’t a prison or jail. It wasn’t…

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, if there’s a locked door, no…

PAVEL DUROV: Pillow, but legally speaking, it wasn’t. Yeah, legally speaking.

The Alleged Charges and Legal Process

TUCKER CARLSON: So legally speaking, why were you being held against your will by the French government? Did you ever, in the first four days, did they make it clear to you?

PAVEL DUROV: So I understood that they were worried about the alleged lack of response from Telegram towards the judicial requests coming from France, which turned out to be not true because we’ve never received a single legally binding legal request coming from France. So I was even more confused and I asked the French policeman, why haven’t you been following the European law and serving your legal request in the way prescribed by this law? It’s defined by the Digital Services Act, and it’s there. You can Google the process, you can read the privacy policy of Telegram. It’s easily accessible on the website. So why didn’t you do it? And they didn’t answer. But thanks God, they started to do it. And then they started to receive responses helping them to identify criminal suspects. Meaning we would disclose IP address and phone number of people who were suspects in criminal investigations when we received court orders signed by a judge.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

PAVEL DUROV: And this was something that we had in place since a year ago, before that. So it’s not something that the French have forced us to do. It’s something that we already had in place. We had a company in Belgium processing these requests. Other countries have successfully been using this process, but somehow the French have ignored it completely. And this is why, you know, I was very surprised. Why haven’t you been doing this? But this is the process and to…

TUCKER CARLSON: To be clear, I mean, I think this is like standard for social media companies. A company, whether it’s Facebook or X or Snapchat or any of them, get a court order from a country in which they have users, and the court order says, you know, we have reasonably, this person’s a criminal, can we have the IP address? I think they all comply with that, correct?

PAVEL DUROV: Yes. Well, it’s the DSA law. If you don’t comply with it, you can be fined, you can be banned. Well, it’s a question whether you want to continue providing your service in the European Union. But it only concerns the identification data, meaning IP address and in some cases, phone number of the suspect. It has nothing to do with, for example, private messages of a person or other kinds of activity, which is much more protected and much more private. Even if we wanted to, we wouldn’t be able to disclose this information. Right, but it’s not required by the law.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, but what you’re describing is like the state of play across Europe anyway for all the companies.

PAVEL DUROV: Exactly.

An Unprecedented Arrest

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, so… But because this is like a normal thing that’s already taken its process that everyone recognizes and it’s been ongoing, you must be very confused as to why you’re being held in this jail that they’re not calling a jail. Were you confused? Like, were you worried?

PAVEL DUROV: It was very hard to…

TUCKER CARLSON: I stepped off an airplane and a bunch of cops showed up, took my phone away and threw me in the back of a car and took me to a cell. Even though they pretended it was not a jail, but wouldn’t let me out and lock the door for four days without being able to contact my family, I’d be concerned. Were you concerned?

PAVEL DUROV: That was very surprising. I was shocked.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re very diplomatic.

PAVEL DUROV: You know, at first I thought there was some mischief, mistake. They got the wrong guy. Yeah, I thought like, they listen, they read the list of charges. I have nothing to do with these crimes, like organized crimes, selling drugs, all these things. Like, what do I have to do with that? Then I realized it’s serious because they’re not letting me out if they keep me there in this…

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, but just for perspective, so you’ve got a billion users. It’s a multi-billion dollar company. You started the company, you own the company. It’s a huge company. It’s one of the biggest social media companies in the world. And so there’s a process. So if they think the telegram is doing something wrong, they send letters to your general counsel or maybe get your phone number, which I’m sure they could pretty easily get French intelligence, I’m sure has everybody’s phone number and just call you and tell you. I’ve never heard of a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company getting arrested at the airport on grounds like this.

PAVEL DUROV: You’re very right. It never happened before.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s like completely…

PAVEL DUROV: It’s unprecedented.

TUCKER CARLSON: Outrageous.

PAVEL DUROV: It’s unprecedented, right? Never. So it’s something that I think was very unnecessary because on top of what you just described, I’m also a French citizen.

French Citizenship and Proximity to Authorities

TUCKER CARLSON: How did you wind up… Because you’re not from France originally.

PAVEL DUROV: Yeah, I’m not from France originally, but I have certain ties to France and I was awarded, so to say, this citizenship for using a specific process which took several years. But I didn’t cut any corners. Like I had to pass the French exam test. Like if I had to do certain things that you’d normally do because you…

TUCKER CARLSON: Wanted to be a French citizen.

PAVEL DUROV: I wanted…

TUCKER CARLSON: I like…

PAVEL DUROV: I love the country. It’s a great country. It’s a great culture. Of course, these events are alarming, and that’s why I think it makes sense to speak about them. And the most interesting part of it is that every French citizen has his or her personal home address in the passport. So the authorities of France know very well how to reach out to this person. Like he’s there or she’s there. And on top of that, the consulate of France is located in the same building as the Telegram office in Dubai.

TUCKER CARLSON: So the same building.

PAVEL DUROV: The same building.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve been to the building.

PAVEL DUROV: You’ve been to the building.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s not a huge building, by the way.

PAVEL DUROV: Not really. And it’s just two floors below.

TUCKER CARLSON: So two floors from the French Consulate.

PAVEL DUROV: We’re two floors from the French Consulate. And I was a frequent visitor to the consulate. And whenever any French agency, authority or representative of France, of the government wanted to see me, they had no issue whatsoever arranging such meetings. And these meetings took place. I was happy just to go two floors below my office and have a conversation or invite them to our office. So it’s very, very strange what happened, because it could have been resolved by different means.

Media Coverage and Public Humiliation

TUCKER CARLSON: If you think, well, obviously they went way out of their way to humiliate you to issue… They announced that they arrested you. I mean, you were not obviously scanning Google for news stories by yourself, because you didn’t. You couldn’t. I couldn’t, but the rest of us were. And they announced, we’ve arrested Pavel Durov and arms sales or drug sales or kiddie porn or… I mean, who knows? Like horrible…

PAVEL DUROV: It’s like, what?

TUCKER CARLSON: So they were trying to terrify you and humiliate you.

PAVEL DUROV: Obviously this is something that was also very unusual. So what my lawyers told me here in France that normally the prosecutor’s office is not that public. They are not issuing press statements every day and they’re not commenting on their investigations, which was not the case with me, where they were very active.

TUCKER CARLSON: They were trying to read the… Have you gone back? So you were… Of course you were locked up and you couldn’t read the coverage, but have you gone back and read it for those four days when you were being held?

PAVEL DUROV: When I was in police custody, I heard from one of the policemen. He told me, every newspaper in the world is covering this and is mentioning you. And I said, what’s going on? He said, well, a lot of people supportive, but I asked him, what do newspapers write about this case? And he told me everything but truth. And I freaked out at that moment. Like, everything but truth, seriously. And when I went, these four days ended and I was…

The Impact on Family

TUCKER CARLSON: Can I just ask, like, what was your family doing? And you’ve got children and parents and like, what were…

PAVEL DUROV: To be honest, this is the hardest part because I’m pretty stress resilient, so I can take care of myself. But being there, locked there, thinking about what’s going on with my mom, you know, she’s very ill, she’s very elderly. She was very worried, as I learned, after what’s going on with my kids. And this is something that gets to you.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you couldn’t contact them?

PAVEL DUROV: No, there’s no way. Because you don’t have access to any device or he can’t even read anything.

TUCKER CARLSON: What did they think was going on?

PAVEL DUROV: They were very surprised and very confused and very worried.

The Irony of Being Arrested in the “Free West”

TUCKER CARLSON: Just for perspective, those who don’t know your story, I won’t tell the whole story. It’s an amazing story. We did an interview with you maybe a year and a half ago in which you told your story. You’re Russian, as people can probably hear in your voice and sound like you’re pretty happy in Russia. Successful in Russia. You had to leave Russia for political reasons. The government was trying to use your company for its own purposes. You didn’t want to be used. You let. You left your own country and moved. Well, moved around, but wound up in Dubai and France. Were you ever arrested by Putin?

PAVEL DUROV: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: No. Okay, just to put a finer point on this, I mean, I’m not you know, defending Putin. But you were arrested by the French government in the free West. Did that. Did you ever kind of see the irony there?

PAVEL DUROV: That was the most unexpected place to get arrested in for me. Because before in this trip, I visited several countries. Some of these countries are considered in the west to be autocratic or authoritarian, but I had. And Telegram is very, very popular in these countries. I visited before coming to Paris, and I had zero issues whatsoever, despite the fact that Telegram does zero censorship in terms of political speech. And Telegram provides 100% privacy and confidentiality to its users in all these places.

Telegram’s Privacy-First Business Model

TUCKER CARLSON: So you do not extract personal information from your users, unlike our company.

PAVEL DUROV: Yes, we never do that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay. But other companies, I mean, Facebook is. I mean, Meta is very rich because they extract that personal data. Right?

PAVEL DUROV: That’s a business model. Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s not attacking them. Sorry, I am attacking them. But that’s what they do. And you don’t do that.

PAVEL DUROV: Yes. Right. We don’t have to do that. We came up with ways to monetize Telegram without having to abuse people’s personal data this way. So Telegram became profitable last year and very profitable. More than half a billion dollars in profit without having to rely on methods like this when you have to extract personal data and then use it for targeting ads. For example, we have a very successful subscription paid subscription service on Telegram. We monetize in ways that are consistent.

TUCKER CARLSON: With our values, that are voluntary. Your users have to sign up for the things that make you money. It’s not just stealing their data from them.

PAVEL DUROV: Exactly. The service is free, and we just crossed 1 billion monthly user threshold or milestone.

TUCKER CARLSON: Congratulations.

PAVEL DUROV: Thank you. So it’s growing very fast, and we are very happy with what we. We are very proud with what we do. Because if you look at any mobile messaging app right now, and we’re number two after you can guess which other app. We’re the second most popular messaging app in the world. But most of the features that you use on a modern messaging app first were created by Telegram, and then they were borrowed. We came up with a list of like 100 such features. And those are not, like, small things. Those are basic things that you know in every modern messaging app, like the way you respond to messages, the way you share links, the way you share documents, the text formatting. Many, many, many, many things. Like, dozens of those first appeared on Telegram, and then three to eight years after, they’ve been copied by our rivals, one of which is larger than Telegram and others are smaller. But still we are proud. I’m not going to guess how the green one. But we are proud that we’re. We’ve been able to shape what the industry is like today and define how billions of people communicate.

The Double Standard of Western Justice

TUCKER CARLSON: But it’s just. I’m just going back to this story, which is, by the way, I love your Slavic deadpan approach to this. It’s crazy. I mean, if Mark Zuckerberg or Elon got grabbed, you know, at the private part of De Gaulle Airport, you’d be like, stop the blame. What? The world is ending. But they grabbed you, and people were like, oh, he’s got a Russian last name. It’s fine. I’m sure there’s a good reason.

PAVEL DUROV: Wow. I hope it had nothing to do with my ethnicity, because that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course it did. Are you joking?

PAVEL DUROV: That would be very alarming because you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Got run out of Russia, by the way. I just want to say that again, you got run out. You’d probably still be living there if you hadn’t had to leave. So it’s clearly you didn’t participate in whatever they’re mad about in Russia. You’re gone.

PAVEL DUROV: Yeah, but it still can make you an easier target.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m aware of that.

PAVEL DUROV: Because people don’t know my story. Right. People. Not everybody watched our last interview, and not everybody had.

TUCKER CARLSON: Where was the out? So I was, well, I know you, and obviously I like you, so. And I like what you’re doing. I like your commitment to privacy and to the user, and I think the user’s privacy should play a role in your. In your thinking about a business. And that’s my view. And you agree. Most companies don’t agree, so I’m on your side. But where were all the civil libertarians jumping to your defense? Like, how can you just grab someone at the airport because. Well, because who knows? Why can you just do that? Put him in jail for four days, take his phone. Where were your defenders?

PAVEL DUROV: Well, to be fair, some people did. Yeah, some did speak up and defended me. And I. Actually, there were more than 10 million or more than, I think, a very big number of people who signed a petition to free me.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

PAVEL DUROV: So it was a very, very large movement.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m thinking more like the United nations, you know, human rights watchdogs. Like, where are they? If this happened in North Korea, which, you know, I don’t know, it hasn’t, so. But if it happened there, we’d be like, oh, my gosh, it’s Stalinism, but it happens in France. And you’re like, I’m sure there’s a good reason.

PAVEL DUROV: That’s what makes this situation so complicated? Because we have to look at the instances such as this one. Regardless of which jurisdiction I was born in, which jurisdiction is conducting this investigation, it should be completely on unbiased. Right. So it’s, it’s very concerning.

The Investigation and Legal Compliance

TUCKER CARLSON: And they ask you questions about Russia during your four days of entertainment?

PAVEL DUROV: I think so. But it wasn’t the focus of the questioning. The most questions were about the way Telegram operates, as if it’s some kind of mystery. You know, we are a big company. We are audited by a big four auditing firm. We work with the biggest financial institutions. So we’re a big company and we spend millions of dollars every quarter on legal compliance. So we pay to law firms to receive the best advice in order to make sure we don’t violate laws anywhere. And we operate in almost 200 countries. So it was very, very surprising for me to get detained in Paris and learn that Telegram did something wrong or didn’t process some requests. And then when I learned more about it, I realized that we did actually nothing wrong because the law is very clear in describing the process that should be followed in order for this request to be processed. And it wasn’t followed.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that’s something that French prosecutors could have found out in about six minutes.

PAVEL DUROV: Obviously, that’s the irony of it. It was like you could Google Telegram, police contact Telegram, EU corporation, whatever, and it would be instantly visible online for anybody who has access to Google. For some reason it wasn’t used by.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. And you have to think that there’s like a reason before I ask about that. How was the food in French prison, by the way?

PAVEL DUROV: I think they made some exception in relation to food for me. So it was fine. I was fine, was pretty good. I, you know, I don’t eat meat, I don’t eat fast food, so I was good with enough fish and I could do my 200 push ups in the morning, like 200 squats. And then I repeated it because I didn’t have access to a gym. So I, I kept my routine there.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you join a gang?

PAVEL DUROV: No, I was alone there.

Current Legal Status and Travel Restrictions

TUCKER CARLSON: Maybe I can push ups in your cell. That’s just, the whole thing’s incredible. So where does it stand now? You know, we’re in, I should say we’re in France right now. You’re still in France?

PAVEL DUROV: I’m still in France.

TUCKER CARLSON: Many, many months later.

PAVEL DUROV: Eight, Almost eight months.

TUCKER CARLSON: Eight months later, you’re still in France. Why are you still here?

PAVEL DUROV: So there is this limitation on my travel, traveling ability, so to say, which is called judicial control. Judicial control is when you can’t leave the country freely because there is still investigation going on and you’re one of the suspects or the suspect. I was still being allowed to go to Dubai and I returned last week from Dubai and I will be going to Dubai later this week. But it’s a very, very restricted, controlled process still.

TUCKER CARLSON: And what’s the idea there since you own a multi billion dollar company with a billion users, that’s really famous. Like where, where would you go on planet Earth if you were going to run away?

PAVEL DUROV: Well, that’s exactly like my, the source of my misunderstanding and my confusion here. So where I’m not running anywhere and you know, I’ve been to Dubai, came back. So it’s very hard for me to understand my role in being here because I’m required to answer some questions in relation to telegram every like fifth month or fourth month. So the other like three or four months, I am just having to be here for reasons that are very hard for me to understand.

The Real Nature of the Charges

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s their argument? I mean, I’m just confused. So no one’s actually, despite the headlines that flooded the world in August when you were arrested, detained, whatever they’re calling it, put in a cell, you were not involved in kiddie porn, drug sales, organized crime, arms, I can’t remember. But like the worst crimes in the world, no one is actually claiming you were involved in those crimes, correct?

PAVEL DUROV: Correct.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay. They’re saying that you had, of your billion users, there were a few who may have been doing bad things. And you’re saying, I tried, but I didn’t know that it’s not my fault, right?

PAVEL DUROV: Correct.

The Absurdity of the Charges

TUCKER CARLSON: It’d be like saying to Donald Trump, there are 350 million people in America, you know, one third the number of users you have. And some of them are using kiddie porn or selling drugs or, you know, organized crime, and we’re putting you in jail for it. I mean, this like, it’s insane. So why are you still here? Like, what is the claim against you?

PAVEL DUROV: I’m still trying to find out. To be honest, I’m still confused. So at first they said, you fail to respond to our legal requests, and that’s why you’re complicit. But first of all, it’s not true that we didn’t respond to legally binding legal requests. And secondly, it’s a very extensive interpretation of complicity, even for the French legal and judicial system.

What I hear from my lawyers is that it’s quite unprecedented. They had a couple of really small niche apps that are like 10,000 times smaller than Telegram and were targeted specifically at criminals. They were nothing. Like, they didn’t even have these companies, that they didn’t even have bank accounts. It was a different profile. They were not audited by Big Four organizations. But these companies have been persecuted in France before, and their founders, I understand, were accused of running a platform that is created for the purpose to facilitate crime.

It’s pretty much obvious that Telegram is not such a company. Right? So it has a billion users. Every eighth person on the planet is a user of Telegram, a regular one. And it’s incomprehensible to assume that all these people are criminals. And everybody knows the story of Telegram very well. It’s not something that was built for criminals. However, this reasoning, as far as I understand, is being used also in our case. They say that, all right, so you created this app, and this app was used by other people. They were criminals, and you didn’t do enough to prevent them from doing what they were doing. Which, again, is contrary to what we see on other platforms. Like, you have instances where problematic content exists despite the best efforts of social media platforms, moderation teams and so on and so forth. It’s almost impossible to avoid that.

TUCKER CARLSON: But the claim itself just conceptually doesn’t make sense. I mean, if someone commits armed robbery in Burgundy or Toulouse or Nice, can President Macron be arrested for that? Because it’s his country, he runs the country, and he didn’t do enough to stop the armed robbery in Toulouse. Like, how can that stand? Why isn’t he in jail like that? That’s nuts.

PAVEL DUROV: Well, the logic also eludes me, so to say.

The Real Motive Behind the Arrest

TUCKER CARLSON: Back with the Russian understatement. No, I. It’s. So, look, here’s the inescapable conclusion, I think, as from a bystander’s perspective, that they do this in public rather than just calling you. So we have a problem, we work it out. Or call your lawyers, they arrest you in public, they slander you, they try and tie you to the worst crimes man commits, and then they put you in jail. And so they’re trying to sweat you, to intimidate you, to wear you down in order to get into the back door of Telegram so they can spy on people, probably really for political reasons.

That’s what they’re really worried about is a revolt in their own country. Every government’s really worried mostly about its own population revolting against its bad governance. Like, that’s their real fear. And they hate Telegram because it offers users privacy and that’s a threat to them. And so they force you as the owner of the company, to give them the keys. That’s what it looks like.

PAVEL DUROV: Well, to be clear, nobody approached me with the demand to give the so called keys. Such keys don’t exist technically, but if somebody approaches me and says, we need the keys, you’ll be among the first to learn about it. But that hasn’t happened, actually.

TUCKER CARLSON: The US government pushed you. I remember the FBI was trying to.

PAVEL DUROV: Yeah, yeah, okay.

TUCKER CARLSON: This is something governments want, not just of you, but of all social media companies.

Government Backdoors and Surveillance

PAVEL DUROV: You know what’s interesting? In the US you have a process that allows the government to actually force any engineer in any tech company to implement a backdoor and not tell anyone about it with using this process called the gag order. And there are certain legal procedures.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not tell his own employer about it.

PAVEL DUROV: And yes, exactly. If you tell your own boss, you can end up in jail. Like, gag order. Actually, yeah, this is something. It’s on Wikipedia.

TUCKER CARLSON: In France, in the Soviet Union, or in the U.S. in the U.S.

PAVEL DUROV: Okay, I’m not criticizing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Your employees have a legal obligation to act as fifth column spies, saboteurs against you. Your employees.

PAVEL DUROV: Well, that’s one of the reasons we didn’t discuss last time why I didn’t move to the US with my team.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you got mugged in San Francisco on your one trip there.

PAVEL DUROV: Exactly. But I did this extensive legal analysis. Like I asked my lawyers, the US lawyers, what is this thing called, the gag order. And they explained it to me and how it works and how it could potentially be applied. So we decided maybe not the best place for a privacy oriented platform, but here in France, we really don’t know because there are a lot of conspiracy theories about it. And at first I thought I also started to be concerned, what is this about? But then when the French police and the French judges started to send their requests in accordance to their European law, to Telegram and receive the identification data, meaning the IP address of criminal suspects, they seemed to become very happy. They expressed their joy in the press. They said, oh, Telegram is now cooperating. All of a sudden, as if it was something new.

The “Cooperation” Narrative

TUCKER CARLSON: When they said that, I remember that very well, that sounded to me like they were trying to discredit you and were sending the message because they were not specific. They said they’re cooperating. And that made it sound to the rest of the world like, oh, they broke Pavel. They hung him by his ankles and burned him with Gauloises until he finally gave up and turned over the back end to them. And now they’re spying on all Telegram users. You’re cooperating like you would in East Germany in 1975. That’s what it sounded like, yeah.

PAVEL DUROV: That’s why it’s so important to clarify this, because this perception is not only bad for Telegram, it’s even worse for the image of France. Because if you think about it, France is still a land where laws and legal procedures should be adhered to. And even in this case, if you want additional access to certain data, personal data, it has to be done in accordance with laws. And then every company, for example us, we never disclosed private messaging data to any third party, including governments. And if in some country they would say, you have to do it, we would discontinue providing services in that country, then doing it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Isn’t that why you left Russia in the first place?

PAVEL DUROV: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’ve been through this. You left your own country because you refused to give up the privacy of the user.

France’s Encryption Ban Attempt

PAVEL DUROV: Yeah, but here it’s catching up, because last month the Senate here in France passed a law basically banning encryption. This law was forcing all messaging app providers to implement the backdoor for the French law enforcement to fight crime. The problem here was fight crime. Well, exactly, because the problem here was there is no such thing as an exclusive backdoor. If you implement the backdoor technically, other actors are able to exploit it. And it could be foreign agents, it could be hackers, it could be anyone.

So that law would have put millions of people or tens of millions of French citizens in danger. Their private messages would have been exposed. The criminals, however, would have instantly switched to niche, smaller apps, not mainstream apps. And if the government would try to ban these apps, they would switch to VPNs. They would even become more efficient in hiding their traces. So the criminals would experience zero problems if that law is passed. It’s the law abiding citizens who would be affected. And that’s why it’s so problematic.

And nobody was talking about it. I asked my French friends, like, have you heard about this law? No, they were completely unaware. And luckily the national assembly here in France shot that bill down, so it didn’t pass this time. But if you look at the new project by the EU, by the European Commission, published in early April, they again want to do exactly that to backdoor encryption. But now on the EU level, and that raises many serious questions, because no country in the world banned encryption so far. Even the places that you would consider authoritarian places, for reasons that I just described, it’s just a huge threat for the entire population. For all users, for all users to legally force companies to implement backdoors.

So I think it’s very important that people talk about these things. First of all, that France is not a country where freedoms are disrespected. For example, if people assume that France can now take CEOs of tech companies hostage in such a way that you describe and then extract certain personal data from them using illegal and unlawful processes, that would be a big, big blow for the image of France. But I don’t think we are there because we haven’t.

The Rules-Based Order

TUCKER CARLSON: You might chip away at this concept of the rules based order. The rules based order, which everyone in NATO is always lecturing everybody else about. The rules based order. There’s nothing rules based about what they did to you. I’m sorry, I mean, that’s just. That’s might makes, right? That’s we have guns and you don’t. It’s our airport, not yours. You’re going to jail. I just don’t see the legal justification for doing this to anybody.

PAVEL DUROV: It was excessive in my view, but it was also a sign that again, in my view, this investigation was not based on thorough analysis of what Telegram represents and what the goals of the company are. And again, there has been no attempt and they had, didn’t even try to solve this in a more traditional, conventional way before starting. A legal way, actually a legal and diplomatic way.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’d they do with your phone?

PAVEL DUROV: Well, they just kept my phone. I hope they scrutinize it because there they have a lot of proof that actually Telegram is a completely legitimate and compliant organization. And we’ve spent huge funds on content moderation and legal compliance all over the world since like 10 years ago. So they’re welcome to have my phone.

Telegram’s Legitimacy

TUCKER CARLSON: How’s your bonds?

PAVEL DUROV: Yeah, so Telegram issued bonds a few years ago. We were happy to have the assistance of JP Morgan, the world’s largest bank.

TUCKER CARLSON: And world’s biggest bank. So I just, I only asked. I knew that. And I just want you to say it because just to underscore the point, it says you’re not like some, you know, Belarusian college student doing this out of your room or something. This is like a worldwide, huge company. It’s just absolutely crazy. And it doesn’t have as deep penetration in the United States as it does in the rest of the world. So I just, I just want people to know this is not some sketchy deal. This is like, I just can’t believe they did that. Where are you now in the process?

PAVEL DUROV: So the process is not going too fast. But this is the tradition here in France. So I’m not.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m just visiting for a couple days. Do you think I’ll get out of here?

PAVEL DUROV: So I haven’t been granted a fast track in my case. And, you know, I’ve just seen my investigative judges. They have this role of investigative judges here in France. So my current status is I’m not on trial. It’s an investigation intended to find out whether there’ll be enough evidence to put this on trial. So I’m not even on trial yet.

Imprisoned in France

TUCKER CARLSON: But you’re basically imprisoned in France.

PAVEL DUROV: But I. Well, I’m not imprisoned. But can you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Can you leave whenever you want?

PAVEL DUROV: I can’t leave France freely. That’s true. So what?

TUCKER CARLSON: How is that not imprisoned? I mean. I mean, they’re great restaurants. I’m not. You know what I mean? It’s not a commissary with guys with face tattoos. But if you can’t leave, then aren’t you by definition imprisoned?

PAVEL DUROV: You could say so. I just don’t want to create this image of a real prison in the minds of our viewers.

TUCKER CARLSON: This is. I don’t know if anyone can see the cell we’re in. It’s very nice, room service and everything. I mean, no, it’s France. It’s like very first world in some ways, but not in its attitudes. I’m learning. So how long will that continue? And you’ve got children, you know, and a life and a business and friends and family. And they’re not in France, so far as I know.

The Impact of Legal Restrictions on Business Operations

PAVEL DUROV: So, yes, they’re all in Dubai and I have kids in Dubai that I am unable to. Not just see. I’m unable to legally take care of them by signing certain documents I have to sign. And I’ve, you know, it’s been very stressful also for my mom, who is gravely ill and I can’t see her. I also have this company to run. We have a billion users. It’s important and I’m doing it remotely now, but it’s not as efficient.

So if you think about it, France is less than 1% of the telegram user base. It’s something like half of 1%. And the other 99 and a half percent are coming from elsewhere, right? India, Indonesia, you name it. And it’s kind of counterintuitive for me that the entire organization is impacted because we have this ongoing investigation here in France, particularly given the fact that it’s growing in a pace that only requires me to be here once, like in several months. So I do think that the current restriction is very strange and very unnecessary and I hope it will be lifted later this year.

TUCKER CARLSON: And if it’s not, your identity is constantly under attack.

PAVEL DUROV: Well, let’s see. Because first of all, this investigation can’t last forever. It can probably last for another several months or a year and then it will have to either go on trial or be.

TUCKER CARLSON: You could be criminally charged for this.

PAVEL DUROV: Everything is possible. Like you can’t rule out.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, if they’d arrest you at the Airport, they’d do anything, right?

Concerns About Due Process and Collateral Damage

PAVEL DUROV: That’s what bothered me when I was in police custody for these four days. Like, first thing, something like this should have never happened because I assumed there were certain thorough procedures to verify a lot of alleged facts before taking a decision such as this. Like, you can’t start something like this based on a media article that Telegram allegedly is non cooperative, or that Telegram supposedly has worse content moderation than other platforms. Both these facts turned out to be completely false. You have to be really thorough and examine things before making this decision.

Because these decisions such as this are not only harmful for my relatives or for my company or for me personally. Decisions such as this, I think, impact France as a whole. And I’m French, I’m a French citizen, so I worry about that as well. I really think that out of all social media platforms, Telegram was probably the most friendly but potential partner for France. And every time anyone from the French government, the French authorities reached out to me, I did my best to help and I helped.

So this for me looked almost like friendly fire, like with their trying to attack their own ally in a way. And I was so surprised that this would happen because the collateral damage, not just for me and my company, but for the image of France, is quite significant. And I talked to many of my friends, the CEO of big tech companies, and they were very concerned and asked me, can I still come to France? Is it, Is it still safe to be in France? People were worried, and the CEO of smaller companies, they don’t have a billion users, are even more worried. They say, look, they did this to you and you’re very well known and the company of your profile should be treated in certain different way. I’m running a small startup. A friend of mine would say, I’m scared to come. And, you know, this trend continues. So I heard.

TUCKER CARLSON: But there’s the sad thing is, like, nobody’s afraid to go to Uzbekistan. Actually, I’m not endorsing Uzbekistan. I’ve never been there. But I’ve never met anyone who’s like, I’m too afraid to go to Uzbekistan.

PAVEL DUROV: Yeah, I was there last summer, it was great.

TUCKER CARLSON: Didn’t even know that. But that’s the point. I mean, right? These countries that you grew up thinking are primitive or don’t have functioning legal systems, or, you know, whose laws are really just a function of the whim of the monarch or whatever they turn out to be kind of fine with what you do, or what I do, or what any normal person who believes in human rights does, but it’s like France or Great Britain, like, didn’t you get citizenship here thinking this was a safe haven? As someone who was in some sense kind of a refugee from his own country, a refugee of principle, like, I don’t want to share this with the government. I’m leaving. Didn’t you choose this country for citizenship because you thought that it was a place that was committed to human rights?

Reflections on Freedom and Soviet Experience

PAVEL DUROV: Well, the slogan of France is liberty, fraternity, egality, right? So equality. So it’s something that I strongly believe in and it’s certainly something that France stands for in my opinion. And for pretty much everybody who was born in the Soviet Union like I was. Western Europe is considered to be this place where freedoms and human rights are respected. And that’s why it was such a shock for me back there in the police custody.

Interestingly, the interpreter that we had during these four days in police custody also emigrated from the Soviet Union. She was translating English to French and back. And after being present there for two days, she sat during a break with all the policemen and clerks and everybody present there. She said, I left the Soviet Union hoping I would be in a country with freedoms. And it seems now that the Soviet Union has caught up with me. So I was very surprised to hear her say that because for me, France is not there yet. France is still the country that respects human rights and freedoms.

However, I understood, I later understood why she was so sensitive to this, because she actually experienced what life is like in an environment where you don’t have freedom of speech and you don’t have a free market economy. And that’s why every perceived change in this direction where freedoms are less respected is making them very, very concerned. People from the Soviet Union and I myself, I remember my life, I was a small kid in the Soviet Union, but I remember having only three TV channels and all these three TV channels show the same TV program about the Communist Party. I remember having two kinds of ice cream in the shops across the city and across the country and no more.

And then when I was brought to Italy as a 5 year old kid and I could see, okay, actually I could have 100 TV channels and some of them even show Disney cartoons and Japanese anime. That’s great. I can go to a shop downstairs and they have 200 different kinds of ice cream. That’s much better than I experienced in the Soviet Union. And I thought maybe these things afterwards I realized that this systems called the free market economy and respect to freedom of speech and basic human rights, they’re actually very good concepts because they make your life abundant.

But the problem is I remember this life in the absence of these things. Other people from the Soviet Union, probably from Cuba, from other countries like that, experience that. But people who were born and grew up here, for example in France, have not necessarily had this experience. They take freedoms for granted. They think that things are going to be fine because we’re a free country. And what can possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, the history knows many examples when free societies gradually degraded into societies without freedoms. And one good example was last month with this anti encryption law I told you before about. Because people were completely ignorant. Here in France, the public was completely ignorant.

The Threat to Encryption and Privacy

TUCKER CARLSON: So no encryption means no privacy. Yes, correct.

PAVEL DUROV: It means everybody’s vulnerable. Like everybody’s messages can leak. It’s mind boggling. And of course every time something like this is proposed, very logically sounding justifications are used.

TUCKER CARLSON: To protect the children, to protect the.

PAVEL DUROV: Children, to fight crime, to neither of.

TUCKER CARLSON: Which they bother doing, by the way. They don’t care about children and they don’t stop crime.

PAVEL DUROV: Or in the Soviet Union they would say, like in Maoist China. In other places they would say, oh, our geopolitical rival is trying to stir chaos in our country. So we have to limit this.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s Qatar doing it. It’s Russia, it’s Qatar.

PAVEL DUROV: So yeah, I don’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: But, but, but it’s always some Trotskyite wreckers. It’s some unseen force from a foreign land trying to wreck our project. So we need to oppress you to keep you safe.

European Union Regulations and Censorship

PAVEL DUROV: Yes, but it’s not easy because now in the European Union you have all these laws that basically say you have to remove anything. It’s actually part of the Digital Services Act. You have to remove anything one of the European countries demands you remove for the entirety of the European Union. So if you have, for example Romania or Estonia or any other of these very highly respected countries demanding that you remove most of telegram channels for whatever reason, you have to remove them, then you can appeal. Well, it will take you probably several years, but you have to remove them within like a very short time frame. Otherwise you’ll be facing fines, bans and so on.

TUCKER CARLSON: How is that not the Warsaw Pact? I mean, how is that not Soviet? If you criticize the people in charge, we shut you down. That’s what they’re saying.

PAVEL DUROV: Interesting you would say that. It was in 2009, 2008 actually. I made my first trip to Latvia on a train from St. Petersburg and something was wrong with my visa so I had to get off in the border Town in Latvia. But I had this long discussion with a border police officer. Well, I seem to like border policemen. So border police officer in Latvia. And I started to discuss his life in Latvia after Latvia was accepted in the EU. And he told me this interesting thing. He said, you know, we hated being in the Soviet Union, but now that we are in the EU, we realize we are in a very similar organization. Of course we’re in the Soviet Union.

TUCKER CARLSON: Again, unelected foreigners are still making the key decisions and you don’t get to talk.

PAVEL DUROV: So it’s very funny you would compare this two systems. Of course they’re very different, but still.

The Nature of Telegram’s Platform

TUCKER CARLSON: But fundamentally, if you’re not allowed to criticize the people in charge, you live in a tyranny. I mean, what’s the other definition of it? I have to be able to say to the person making the decisions, I don’t like that decision. Here’s why and a half people say it in public. And I’ve always felt the problem that you have as the person who owns and runs Telegram is that you make it easy for people to come together online. You have the channels and that is, I don’t know if you thought this through and you, you’re an engineer when you, when you built it, but that is potentially a massive threat to governments because it’s not simply communicating one on one. They’re, you know, people can create their own channels, just like a TV channel and reach a lot of like minded people and they could potentially organize. Organize, that’s true.

PAVEL DUROV: But one thing that makes Telegram different, we don’t promote these channels. So everything that you have on Telegram is something that you have to deliberately search for and subscribe for.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

The Neutrality of Telegram

PAVEL DUROV: So unlike some other apps that constantly recommend you content and content sources, we don’t do that. You open Telegram, it’s just an empty list of chats. If you don’t have any friend there and if you are not subscribed to any channel, you have to deliberately find one. So I think we’re a completely neutral platform. We allow everybody to express their voice within the rules of the common sense and then everybody can decide which point of view makes more sense to them and see if, for example, the government is right or their position is right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. That’s called freedom.

PAVEL DUROV: That’s called freedom. Unfortunately, it’s something that surprisingly faces a lot of backlash.

The Future of Encryption and Quantum Computing

TUCKER CARLSON: May I ask you a question about encryption? So the advances in computing power, well, they’re calling it quantum computing. Right. So they’re just so exponential that it’s hard even to understand for the non engineer brain like mine, but they’re profound. The speed at which processes are now occurring, does that eliminate what is the technological state of play? Does that eliminate encryption? Encryption will have to change. Correct.

PAVEL DUROV: The encryption has to change. And there has been made progress in encryption which is quantum secure. So it’s a constant evolution. So the tools to decrypt become stronger and then the tools to encrypt become stronger.

TUCKER CARLSON: That makes sense. Are you confident that encryption, that secure encryption will still exist as a technological matter? With the rise of the super fast.

PAVEL DUROV: Quantum computing, it’s very hard to be confident in anything because first of all we have to rely on the computing power of our devices to decrypt things. Of course there are very sophisticated algorithms in place that make it so that you don’t have to have the same level of computing power on your device as in a data center.

TUCKER CARLSON: You have to bring a data center with you.

PAVEL DUROV: Yeah, exactly. So it’s not exactly like build a.

TUCKER CARLSON: Nuclear power plant, buy 100 acres, you.

PAVEL DUROV: Don’t have to, but you know, it continues. So the particular state actors have almost infinite computing power at their disposal and they have certain technologies at their disposal that they may not be telling everybody.

TUCKER CARLSON: About, they might not be telling people about it.

PAVEL DUROV: So it’s very possible that what you’re saying will become reality or is already reality, who knows?

Government Surveillance Capabilities

TUCKER CARLSON: So, so that kind of is one of the, and I don’t, you know, I know you have, well, you’re legally bound here in France, so you’re under some kind of state control. So, and I know your life is complicated because it’s, I don’t want to push you to say things or get you in trouble, but it does feel like a determined government can spy on anybody it wants to. That’s the way it feels to me. Do you think that’s true?

PAVEL DUROV: Well, I think the biggest risk for personal privacy is the ability of any state actor to penetrate the device of the person, the mobile device, for example, because there are so called zero day vulnerabilities on iOS or Android phones, for example, that the governments sometimes know about and the secret agencies know about and they can exploit them, but everybody else doesn’t know and they can’t defend themselves from them. So if you became a target of a government, it’s really likely that they would install this Trojan so called Trojan called Pegasus on your device. And I was one of these people eight years ago that had Pegasus installed on their phones. According to the leaked reports been there.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is there any way. And I think a lot of people are there without knowing it, and I know that. Is there any way to know if your phone has been compromised if what you’re looking at and typing is being read by somebody else? Is there any way to know for certain?

PAVEL DUROV: For certain, probably no. But there are ways to check that and see if known vulnerabilities have been exploited on your phone. And I know there are some organizations that can help you with that.

Life Without a Phone

TUCKER CARLSON: Where’s your phone? You didn’t leave it out?

PAVEL DUROV: I don’t use a phone. I haven’t used the phone for a year almost. I find it.

TUCKER CARLSON: France took it.

PAVEL DUROV: Oh, France took it. But even before it took it, I wasn’t using my phone. I didn’t have a SIM card in the phone. I just used it to test Telegram, the app. Because we have constant product updates, I have to test it at least twice a week. But I’m not a user of a phone.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I just want to say again, you’re an engineer too. I mean, you’re not like a marketing guy. You’re like a build the App guy. So you understand the technology.

PAVEL DUROV: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because you built it.

PAVEL DUROV: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re coming from a highly informed perspective when you make technology choices. Is that fair?

PAVEL DUROV: You could say so, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: One of the most informed probably in the world. And you don’t have a phone. What is that like, why don’t you have a phone?

PAVEL DUROV: Well, I don’t use phone regularly. Right. I probably own a phone, but I don’t use phone. I don’t carry a phone with me because I find it extremely distracting. I find it also potentially harming my privacy. And I also just. I don’t think it’s a necessary device for me to have when I want to focus on something. I would rather use my laptop or my iPad and put together some note or some interact with my team. Right. So I wouldn’t want to just open my phone and disappear there consuming short form content. And that’s why I don’t use a phone.

Technology and Government Control

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m trying to extract this from you for one simple reason, which is I think that when you come across someone who knows an immense amount about technology, really understands the technology, it’s interesting to know his perspective on technology. Like with everything you know, you don’t use a phone. So I just think, you know, people can draw their own conclusions from that. But. So what do you saw? Ross Ulbricht.

PAVEL DUROV: Ulbricht got the guy who was pardoned. Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Silk Road.

PAVEL DUROV: Mm.

TUCKER CARLSON: So he ran Silk Road. And I’m hardly an expert on this. I was very pleased when he got pardoned, but it seemed like no one accused him of selling drugs. By the way, you know, you would never know that from the New York Times, but he was not like dealing drugs on playgrounds or anything like that. He had a site that made commerce possible outside the control of government. And there apparently were bad people doing bad things on it, also a lot of good people doing good things on it, but it was. None of it was controlled by the government. And he got life in prison for that. That’s my takeaway. And so maybe there will. My sort of conclusion from this is as long as people like you create technology that makes it harder for government to control people, you will be a target of government action. You think that’s.

PAVEL DUROV: Well, first of all, I wouldn’t necessarily compare telegram with Silk Road.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I’m not, and I didn’t mean to. But the idea that. The idea that they need to control everything that is happening online and if they can’t, they’re going to punish you, that does seem like a real fact.

PAVEL DUROV: I think everybody’s trying to reach their goals and be more efficient in what they do. For example, you ask any Minister of Interior, any head of police, and they’ll tell you, oh, encryption is a big problem. If it weren’t for encryption, we would solve all crime. They don’t see it two steps or three steps ahead. And it’s not necessarily some huge conspiracy where evil governments want to take more and more control. Although that may be the case. I’m not knowledgeable on that subject. It seems to me more like everybody’s trying to solve the problems that they see using the tools that they have at their disposal, even if it negatively impacts other areas of our lives.

Future Plans and Restrictions

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re a very generous man, I must say. Last question, and thank you for doing this. How long are you going to be in France? And once you leave France, will you be coming back to France?

PAVEL DUROV: I don’t know yet when these restrictions will be lifted. I hope later this year we’ll be able to travel to my home country, which is Dubai, freely. I will probably come back to France because it’s a great place to spend time in. Of course. I have spent a lot of time in France now. Eight months.

TUCKER CARLSON: Kind of a full immersion program. How’s your French?

PAVEL DUROV: It’s actually good. I was very good when I passed my French exam to receive the passport. It got 97 points out of 100. But I didn’t practice my French much most of my Friends are Americans, but even here in Paris, and my French friends speak perfect English, so I didn’t get a chance to practice.

TUCKER CARLSON: But now you’ve had that chance.

PAVEL DUROV: No, because they speak English with me, it’s changed. Like before, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, it was difficult not to speak French in France. Now, for better or worse, you can get by using English. I’m trying to use my French, but I don’t sound as. I sound even less intelligent in French than in English. So people switch back to English with me.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you don’t anticipate having to stay for the next 20 years or anything here?

PAVEL DUROV: I would be very surprised if that happened. Because, you see, I’m traveling to Dubai. I’m coming back. It’s obvious that I’m not somebody who would try to escape forever. And this investigation has to be concluded in one way or the other. Of course, then if it goes to trial, if that happens, it can take another several years. But then again, it would be completely crazy, I would say, if I would have to move to France and live here permanently for the whole duration of this process, I would say that most likely, I expect that I would be able to travel again later this year.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, we’re certainly rooting for you, Pavel.

PAVEL DUROV: Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

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