Telegram CEO says French charges against him are 'misguided' — read his full statement

The boss of messaging platform Telegram said late Thursday that charges against him by France are "misguided," in his first public comments since being detained in the country nearly two weeks ago.

Pavel Durov, who founded Telegram in 2013, was last week charged with enabling criminal activity on the messaging app — including dissemination of child pornography, drug trafficking, and fraud, and refusal to share information with authorities.

One of the charges — complicity in the administration of an online platform to enable an illicit transaction in an organized gang — carries a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment and a 500,000 euro ($555,833) fine if someone is found guilty after trial.

Durov, who has been in France since his arrest on Aug. 24, posted a 5 million euro bail and remains under judicial supervision. He cannot leave French territory and has to report twice weekly to a police station, prosecutors said last week.

In his first public comments on the situation, Durov said Thursday that France's decision to detain and charge him was based on a "misguided approach.

"If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself," Telegram's CEO and founder said in a statement posted on his Telegram account.

"Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach."

"Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools," he added.

Durov said that he was interviewed by French police for four days after arriving in Paris from Baku, the capital of