The French secret services colluded with the United Arab Emirates to hack the iPhone of Telegram’s Russian founder Pavel Durov in 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
According to the WSJ, the French secret services were concerned that Islamic State was using the messaging service to recruit militants, and carried out the covert operation, codenamed Purple Music, to hack Durov’s phone.
The WSJ also revealed that French President Emmanuel Macron had suggested Durov move Telegram’s headquarters to Paris in 2018 and offered him French citizenship that same year. Durov declined the first offer, but took up the second, eventually becoming a French citizen in 2021.
Durov’s arrest in Paris on Saturday, was not a political decision, Macron insisted on Monday stressing that it was instead part of an “ongoing judicial investigation”. The Paris Prosecutor’s Office subsequently said that charges were being brought against “unidentified persons” and that Durov had been detained as a potential witness.
Durov’s assistant and bodyguard, who were both also detained on Saturday, were released on Tuesday, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported. Due to be held in custody until Wednesday, at which point he must either be charged or released, Durov is suspected of involvement in 12 crimes relating to the administration of Telegram.
While Durov has never made public statements on global politics, an investigation by independent media outlet IStories revealed on Tuesday that he had entered Russia more than 50 times between 2015 and 2021, despite widely being understood to be living in exile.
IStories analysed data from a leak of a recent Russian Border Guard Service database that tracked the movement of Russian citizens in and out of the country, which appeared online earlier this month, and has since been removed.
According to Durov, in 2014 the FSB demanded he disclose the personal details of members of certain groups on social media platform VK, of which he was then the CEO. The groups in question were ones used by Ukrainians to organise the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv against then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. In April of the same year, he sold his stake in the company and left Russia, apparently due to pressure from the Russian security services.
However, IStories found evidence that Durov visited Russia between 2015 and 2017 and then again in 2020 and 2021, though he was notably absent in 2018 and 2019, when the Kremlin declared war on Telegram and unsuccessfully attempted to block it.
While Durov left Russia in late 2017 and didn’t return for 2.5 years, he was in Russia on 18 June 2020, the day the country’s media regulator Roskomnadzor issued a statement lifting the ban on Telegram, acknowledging Durov’s willingness to “counter terrorism and extremism”.
Durov subsequently left Russia in October 2021 and hasn’t returned to the country since, IStories confirmed.