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Tengrinews.kz – Telegram founder Pavel Durov said French intelligence services asked him to help the Moldovan government censor certain Telegram channels ahead of the presidential elections in Moldova. He made the claim in a post on his channel.
According to Durov, the request came through an intermediary.
“After reviewing the channels flagged by French (and Moldovan) authorities, we identified a few that clearly violated our rules and removed them. The intermediary then informed me that, in exchange for this cooperation, French intelligence would “say good things” about me to the judge who had ordered my arrest in August last year,” Durov wrote, calling such actions unacceptable.
He added that if the agency indeed contacted the judge, it was an attempt to interfere in the judicial process. If not, it meant they were exploiting his legal situation in France to influence political events in Eastern Europe, something he said also happened in Romania.
Durov noted that the requests did not stop there: his team was later given a second list of so-called “problematic” Moldovan channels.
“ Unlike the first, nearly all of these channels were legitimate and fully compliant with our rules. Their only commonality was that they voiced political positions disliked by the French and Moldovan governments. We refused to act on this request,” he said.
The Telegram founder reiterated that the platform remains committed to free speech and “will not remove content for political reasons,” vowing to continue disclosing any attempts to pressure the company.
In response to a Tengrinews.kz inquiry, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Culture and Information said it had not requested personal data of Kazakh Telegram users from the platform.
Earlier, in September 2024, Durov announced that Telegram would provide authorities with IP addresses and phone numbers of users violating platform rules. He later clarified that the company had been sharing such data since 2018.
Meanwhile, parliamentary elections took place in Moldova on Sunday, with preliminary results showing the pro-European ruling party in the lead.
